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Archive for the ‘Conservatism’ Category

This is an issue that should concern all those who are fervent conservatives, and it’s one we must now confront as we near the end of the primary season of 2016. In this election cycle, the predictable outcome seems more inevitable than ever, but one can’t ignore how the current GOP front-runner has at times scorned conservatism. Much like the long-established practice of the blue-blood Republicans, what has happened in this election is that conservatism has become increasingly isolated from the remainder of the Republican party, and from the electorate at large. This isn’t a pleasant reality for conservatives, but it is nevertheless true. So long as we permit this to occur, we will never see the sort of electoral outcomes we would prefer, never mind the the realization of substantive policy results for which we’ve been fierce advocates. We have some terrible choices before us, but in advance of us making them, we must come to understand how we’ve arrived in our current predicament. If we’re ever to return this nation to a constitutional path, we must do first by adhering to it ourselves, and we must be willing to accept our own role in our political misfortunes. The truth is somewhat difficult to accept, but there it lies, nevertheless, awaiting the summoning our courage to confront it. Conservatism is increasingly marginalized precisely because we have permitted its dilution and diminution through the acceptance of too many compromises of principles, and too many instances in which we were willing to form an ideological “big tent.” There’s nothing wrong with building temporary alliances with others, but if conservatism doesn’t stake out its ideological limits, and defend its ideological boundaries, it will continue to be marginalized within the broader general electorate.

When George W. Bush ran for the office of President of the United States in 2000, not a few Texans had significant concerns. Many who had observed his performance here in Texas took the time to try to warn the party at large that he was not really a conservative. Bush tried to ply conservatives with a new formulation, calling himself a “compassionate conservative.” There were a few problems with this that some of us at the time recognized, and one of them was in the implicit denigration of conservatism generally: Conservatism is compassionate. We need no such adjectives. We need no such descriptors. We need no such modifiers on what conservatism offers to its adherents. Conservatism is the most compassionate ideology in existence, but by accepting the adjective offered by George W. Bush, we made what was tantamount to an admission that conservatism wasn’t inherently compassionate.

What conservatives across the nation soon discovered was the fact that “compassionate conservatism” meant “big-government Republican.” On issue after issue, from defense, to security, to education, to Medicare, or bank bail-outs, there was no issue in which the answer of George W. Bush would be anything other than the expansion of government and the increase of our national debt at the expense of generations as yet unborn. It is true that Obama has essentially doubled the national debt, but we must in all honesty admit that the same can be said of George W. Bush. The Bush “compassion” came at the expense of conservatism, and at the expense of our generations of Americans as yet unborn. Nevertheless, we permitted Bush to fly the flag of a highly adulterated “conservatism” without respect to what the long-run affects on our movement would be. Most of the conservative media spent much of the eight years of the Bush presidency, and much time well beyond their end, defending the ludicrous policies and positions of a conservative who wasn’t.

We’re seeing some of the same thing in the current election year. Donald Trump talks about “common-sense” conservatism. I have exactly as many problems with this adjective tacked as a prefix to conservatism as I did to the term “compassionate.” In fact, over time, there are or have been “Tea Party conservatives,” “reform conservatives,” “constitutional conservatives,” and “moderate conservatives,” but I think all these adjectives placed in series with “conservatism” simply dilute the meaning. These modifiers also act as a disguise for that which is not conservatism. Herein lies the problem for we conservatives, because I believe conservatism is inherently compassionate, wholly common-sense in its construction, and entirely committed to constitutional principles. In other words, to attach any prefix to “conservatism” is to dilute and pollute the concept, or strictly to permit the purveyor to pose as a conservative while not adhering to all or part of the broader concept of conservatism.

The other effect of these bastardized versions of “conservatism” is that when people traveling under those phony banners continue to assert their hyphenated-conservatism, the natural result is that conservatism takes the blame for all the failures of those folk who are notconservative. For an example, consider again the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush, this time in the context of the creation of the Transportation Security Administration(TSA,) and how he created a huge bureaucracy that increased the costs of government, but now, one-and-one-half decades later, we have another costly bureaucracy that fails to meet the security testing thrown at it just as badly or in many cases in worse fashion than the airlines-owned or airport-owned security that the TSA replaced. Again, another big-government solution that has failed, cost untold billions of dollars, and conservatives and conservatism are now permanently saddled with the blame, in large measure because a putative “conservative” enacted it.

This is the problem with letting others define “conservatism,” or letting non-conservatives decide who is or who isn’t a conservative. “Conservatism” has become so generic and muddied at this point that it’s nearly impossible for us to in the first instance, exclude those who are not actual conservatives, and in the second instance, disclaim ownership of statist programs and policies enacted in the name of conservatism. This is a gargantuan problem we face, and it helps explain why Donald Trump can make the point that “conservatives haven’t accomplished anything,” or that “conservatives are part of the problem.” I think it’s time to heed the warning made explicit by this entire fiasco: We must make distinct our principles from the tawdry mix of self-contradictory, expediency-based lack of principle in the broader Republican party.

I don’t pretend to know the solution in this matter, but it’s one we conservatives must address. We’re being marginalized by virtue of a popular media meme, one that gains through our own passive associations with big-government Republicans, permitting them to shelter among us, gain our support, or in some cases, enjoy our defense of conservatism when they undertake less-than-conservative policies and programs. This happens at all levels of government, but nowhere is it more damning and punishing than at the federal level. Let us review briefly: In the aftermath of the 1998 mid-terms, the anti-Newt forces prevailed and essentially pushed him out of leadership. Since that date, the Republican party, in various times controlling the House, the Senate, or the Presidency(and for some period, all three) have accomplished virtually nothing, but have frequently contributed to the statist cause. The litany of issues and instances in which the Republican party has effectively aided and abetted Democrats in ruining our republic is gargantuan both in number and in consequence. We can no longer, not even once more, permit this to happen in the name of, or under the cover of another misappropriation of the title “conservatism.”

Given the feedback I’ve gotten over a previous column, both here and on Facebook, I’m inclined to believe that the country will not be salvaged or saved. What I’ve been told by people who I had long believed to be conservatives is that ideology is “BS.” Principles are worthless. Ideas and philosophy don’t matter. It’s all pointless babble, with no power to affect change, and that it must be discounted in favor of expedience, electioneering, and the perceived political exigencies of the moment. I understand that there are people who find themselves in a place of complete and utter political disenfranchisement (welcome to my world,) but to suggest that ideas, principles, and philosophies don’t matter is to say nothing matters, not even life itself. I was told in a Facebook comment today that I should be willing to set aside my principles for “the good of the country.” What in the name of John Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt does that mean? Without my principles, how am I to know what is “the good of the country?” Without my principles, I might consider “the good of the country” to be whatever I imagine on a whim. Do I surrender my principles to Donald Trump’s judgments? To Sarah Palin’s? Without principles, how do I know if any of them are right? How do I know? There are some people who I trust a good deal, but I don’t surrender my intellectual or moral sovereignty to anybody. Ever. For once, I’d like all of the proponents of life without principle to consider what it is they’re advocating, assuming they’re still able.

Get up tomorrow morning. Go to work. Why? Why bother? Who says you should pay for your own way in life? Who needs principles? Choose your mate. Your soul-mate. If s/he displeases you, ditch and get another. Why try to work it out? Who says children need parents and an intact family? Why are you hung up on principles? Need food? Go take it from your neighbor. Sure, it’s stealing, but we don’t have time or need of principles of private property, or any of that old-fashioned nonsense about good and evil, the ten commandments, or any other idea. We don’t need that. Just do what you want to who you want when you want! “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” Why bother with that? They’re all out to screw me anyway, and they will do unto me whatever they want, because they don’t have need of principles either.

To Hell with principle. Principles never seem to get me anywhere, anyway! If I stick to principles while others cast them aside, or never bother to consider them, I’m the sucker, and I’m the one at a disadvantage! No sir, no principles any longer. I don’t worry about principles, or holding fast to my beliefs. I can go with the flow. I can be anything I want to be, any time I want to be whatever it is I’m considering. I don’t have a care in the world about principles, because they simply act as a constraint upon me, but upon nobody else. That makes me the sucker, so no more principles. In politics, I want to win, whatever principles I need to reject, discard, or otherwise eject from my thinking. As long as my candidate wins, principles don’t matter.

Ladies and gentlemen, if this line of thinking has come to dominate your thought processes, you’re on the wrong website. LEAVE NOW, and never return, excepting as your folly becomes clearer in your mind. I find this despicable in every possible meaning of the word. If you accept life without principle, I will have nothing to do with you, as no decent person on the face of the planet should. Had you any principles remaining, you would be ashamed for even suggesting such a thing, never mind practicing it. It is despicable that in a nation founded upon an idea, the people of the country would devolve in character and wisdom to such an extent that in the throws of their allegedly patriotic fervor, they would reject ideas and ideals. It makes me sick – physically, demonstrably ill.

People have prevailed upon me to consider how a certain candidate will “Make America Great Again.” I then ask: “What made America great in the first place?” By what standard of value had American been “great?” On what principle were those standards of value based? How can I even determine what is “great” without principles? How can I know if it’s better or worse or just the same if I’ve cast off the ideology by which I am able to make such determinations? How will I know? Whose judgment shall I trust? Upon which principle will my judgment rest once I’ve cast them off? This is something none of them can or will answer. There can be no honest answer to this without either an immediate confession of error or a de facto admission of idiocy.

The United States, as currently constituted, was founded on a series of ideas about self-governance, limited government and natural rights. Those principles, yes, principles, are the basis of everything we do and have and know in this country in terms of our relative prosperity, our material wealth, our technological advancement, and every other tangible exhibit of our modern culture. None of it would have been possible without principles, and you will neither restore or even retain your country if you now discharge those principles in favor of intellectual and political expedience. Put another way, if you have come to believe that you can “Make America Great Again” without reference to principles, what you have done is to become part of a cult of personality, having surrendered your intellectual and political sovereignty to the perceived exigencies of the moment. Good luck with that. In all the history of the world, such a movement has never succeeded. Most frequently, they result in the rise of despots and the enslavement and purging of human beings in the million. Of course, what do I know? One of those antiquated principles to which I adhere is: “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”(George Santayana – one of those useless philosophers.)

If that’s your schtick, so be it. Go forth to whatever end your folly will have earned for you.

Watching the 2016 election season unfold, I’ve become a bit tired of two things in particular about the media, and Donald Trump. In the first instance, Trump is wholly unwilling to discuss details of his plans, and the media dutifully accepts his empty rhetoric in an unquestioning manner almost as thorough as some of his supporters. In the second instance, Mr. Trump is lying, and it’s a big lie that we conservatives must debunk. It could be that Trump is just ignorant, so that when he spews his lie, he’s simply the parroting of talking points emanating from the rabid left and the DC establishment. Either way, a lie is a lie, whether it originated from Trump’s own mind, or he’s merely passing it along unthinkingly. So what’s this big lie? On Thursday, Trump tweeted that conservatives are to blame and that conservatives have failed the country. This couldn’t be further from the truth, but once again, debunking it requires the examination of a few salient details. His throngs of supporters won’t be moved by this, just as they won’t be moved by any other rational argument. By and large, they’re proving immune to facts, reason, and details. It should come as no surprise to conservatives that in one respect, I think there’s a nugget of truth that makes Trump’s lie seem superficially plausible, but it’s just a nugget. It’s time to deconstruct Trump’s lie.

The first thing one must consider in answer to Trump’s assertion is: “Who are the conservatives?” The truth in answer to this question is that actual, thinking, breathing, ideological conservatives constitute a minority of the Republican party. The truth is that there are almost no actual conservatives in Washington DC, and to have been the party to blame for the state of the country, that is where one would have needed to be, not simply in a geographical sense, but in the sense of political efficacy. Actual conservatives haven’t had any power to speak of in Washington DC for nearly two generations. From the time of the middle of Reagan’s second term, there has been little one could properly label as “conservative” in our nation’s capital. Where one can find any justification of Trump’s lie, despite the reality, is that for too long, we conservatives have let people who had no real attachment to conservatism pose as our representatives.

George H.W. Bush was no conservative. Bob Dole was no conservative. George W. Bush was no conservative. John McCain is no conservative. Mitt Romney is no conservative. I can extend this list to include current candidates like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio to an extent, and any number of other conventional Republican politicians. Paul Ryan is certainly no conservative, but neither were his immediate predecessors, John Boehner and Dennis Hastert. Mitch McConnell and his caucus of establishment Republican cronies aren’t conservatives either, but the problem is that we have permitted them to claim conservatism, and we’ve allowed them to thereby define conservatism by the association with us. Most Americans simply don’t pay much attention to politics, and in their barely-informed state of political ignorance, they’ve accepted the following basic formula: Republican = Conservative. They may have accepted also: Democrat = Liberal. Both of these are tragically wrong, and I will suggest to my conservative brethren that we are at least somewhat collectively guilty for letting this stick.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve permitted this to happen. We’ve been so busy trying to expand the “big tent” of conservatism that we’ve permitted the party-crashers of the establishment to redefine what conservatism is, at least in the popular culture, by their constant association with us. It’s been going on since Teddy Roosevelt, who was a progressive in Republican clothing. For my part, here on this website, I’ve always endeavored to make clear the distinctions. One cannot go through the columns of these pages and make any mistake about the fact that the form of conservatism advocated and advanced here has no relation whatsoever to the Republican party, never mind its establishment.

Of course, the truth is far removed from Trump’s nonsensical allegation. Most actual conservatives, I’d nearly assert all, do not support the actions of the establishment, moderate, “center-right” wing of the Republican party. Most conservatives actually detest those people, and would replace them with actual conservatives if it was in their power to do. Every time conservatives have gone along with the GOP establishment in order to try to move things in the right direction, two things have been true almost without exception: The GOP establishment betrays us, and we wind up moving backward. A case in point is immigration: Those who call themselves “conservative” but are aligning themselves with Rubio in this election cycle have a very “YUGE” problem: Their guy is an amnesty-monger, having proposed the most exasperatingly un-conservative bill proposed by a Republican in quite a long time. The so-called “Gang-of-8” bill was a nation-destroying monstrosity, and it would never have attained launch, much less threatened passage, without the efforts of people who claim to be “conservative.”

This is the problem exposed by Trump’s lie: It’s only plausible because we conservatives permit others to define what is conservatism. We permit the misapplication of the term to people who may on occasion, for their own political expedience(and too frequently, ours) to associate with us and our body of political philosophy. Since the greatest number of Americans don’t really pay that much attention, and use generic labels in order to short-cut thinking, we have a responsibility as conservatives to define what that means, and to take great pains to differentiate conservatives from anything else.

The facts supporting Trump’s assertion dissolve the moment one asks: “What is a conservative?” The laundry list of non-conservatives mentioned above is just a sample, but it should serve as a decent basis for understanding the problem in its proper context. When Donald Trump talks about “the conservatives failed,” what he’s actually saying is that “Republicans have failed.” That’s demonstrably true. The problem is that conservatives haven’t failed, largely since they’ve never really held power in Washington, except for the briefest few years immediately after the ’94 “revolution” in the House of Representatives. Even its leader, Newt Gingrich, isn’t really a conservative, but some of the people around him were, and a few of the people who led early efforts in those environs were, but they were short-lived as was the influence of conservatism. To find substantial, muscular conservatism, one must return to the first term of Reagan’s presidency, which is why conservatives so thoroughly long for a Reagan-like leader. It’s also why the fakers, the so-called moderates in the GOP, can’t wait to bury Ronald Reagan in long-forgotten history of the Republic.

We conservatives must separate ourselves from the GOP establishment in a political and cultural sense. We must create clear separation from the party’s moderates because by failing to do so, we permit the broadest brush to be used in defining our cause, our philosophy, and our values. It won’t be easy to do, but I believe it must be done. The most promising of the current crop of GOP candidates, who may be able to draw this distinction, is probably Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX,) simply because on so many issues near and dear to the hearts and minds of conservatives, he bucked the political trends in Washington DC, abandoning even his own party at times, apparently on the basis of principle. It may be that for him to fully set conservatism apart from the muck of establishment GOP politics, he will find himself required to loudly and forcefully make the distinction clear, not merely in his words, but in the clear-thinking actions of his office, so long as he may be in it. Otherwise, Trump will succeed in painting him, and conservatism, as just more representative of the whole of the Republican party, and with such a faulty attribution of blame, conservatism label will continue to be the generic container into which the wider voting public will file all Republicans. I suspect Trump knows all of this, but his campaign isn’t one of nuance or detail. Quite to the contrary, his campaign is one of generic sloganeering, with thinly-veiled emotional appeals substituted in place of syllogisms.

It’s because I do believe that Trump knows the difference that I consider this attack on conservatism to be a lie on his part. There is some small chance that he is so thoroughly ignorant that he doesn’t understand the distinction, but I suspect that’s not the problem. I believe that Trump is gambling on and playing to the electorate in a disingenuous fashion, knowing that his prospective voters don’t understand the distinctions anyway, and won’t be motivated to discover them. Thus far, he’s been largely correct in this assumption, although it remains to be seen whether it will hold up through the entire campaign season.

The problem for conservatives is “Yuge” because they’re stuck in the same sort of problem, in almost exactly the same fashion, as is the basic reputation of “capitalism.” This is not coincidental. Capitalism continues to be blamed for all the evils of statism, in its various manifestations, because few are interested in learning the distinctions between what America’s actual economic system is, and why capitalism bears no actual resemblance. In much the same fashion that we haven’t even had approximately conservative governance in more than a generation, so too is it the case that capitalism was vanquished in America by the enactment of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Sherman Act is wholly antithetical to capitalism, and whatever economic system we may have had since, it is not and cannot be labeled as “capitalism.” Of course, once again, the propagandists for statism have managed to re-cast the meaning of the term in precisely the same way that “conservatism” has been redefined so as to include all “Republicans.” It’s nonsense, of course, but that fact does not stop them from doing it. One must be attentive to details, in a disciplined way. It’s an article of faith among those same propagandists that our system of government be referred to as “democracy,” but that bears little resemblance to the actual form of government our Constitution’s framers designed and ratified. The United States is, by definition of its organizing document, a “constitutional representative republic,” but too often, as a matter of ease and propaganda, folks drop that longer, much narrower description, and it is to the detriment of the body politic, unless you happen to be a propagandist or advocate for statism.

The truth Trump won’t tell you is that had conservatives had their way over the last three decades, we would never have approached the state of desperate gloom under which we now suffer. What he won’t tell you is that statism is the responsible political philosophy, in large measure because he has been among its practitioners and advocates. When he proposes solving the “student loan problem” with another government program, he’s advancing statism. When he proposes replacing Obamacare with what seems to be a Canadian or British-styled single-payer healthcare system, he’s proposing more statism. He’s doubling down. When he states that eminent domain is an important tool in private initiatives, he is declaring statism in big, broad terms, while he is defiling the good name of capitalism to do it. Donald Trump isn’t a capitalist, but instead a cronyist. He has greased palms and bought favors with campaign contributions as much as any person who has ever sought the office of President, and maybe more. His well-documented use of government officials and offices in the name of his private concerns is evidence neither of capitalism, nor conservatism, and that to date, he has gotten away with this mislabeling and slander is at least in part the fault of we conservatives.

After all, it’s the same thing: Jeb Bush calls himself a “conservative” and most of us won’t bother to debunk his claim. His brother called himself a “compassionate conservative,” but too few of us challenged his claim though it was obvious in most notable respects that his presidency was rife with the growth of statism, and the advancement of anti-capitalist measures.

Yes, Donald Trump is probably going to succeed in blaming conservatism for the sins of GOP establishment, moderate actions. His lie will stand mostly unchallenged because most of us will not even stand for our claimed political philosophy. While I can’t do a thing about that, I can and will continue to speak out about the lies of Trump in this regard: Conservatism is not to blame for the ills of this country, any more than one can blame capitalism, and for the same exact reason: We haven’t practiced either in so long that the terms have lost their true meaning. Trump knows this, and he’s gambling that his supporters won’t discover it either. It’s our job, the job of actual conservatives, to educate the electorate on the differences.

Editor’s Note: The Tweet image was added again after the fact because either I didn’t save the article with that image in it, or it dropped it, or something or other. Anyway, that is what I am referencing. Conservatives didn’t HELP the GOP betray its voters.

Saturday afternoon, I took a little bit of time to watch some news. I flipped over to FoxNews, and there I witnessed Mickey Cargile explaining to openly supportive host Eric Shawn and his audience that drug prices are a moral issue, and a quality of life issue, more than economic issue. I couldn’t agree more. His conclusion, however, was based on the moral system of collectivism. I realize that the anchors and stories on FoxNews on weekends tend to be the “B-Team” or even the “C-Team,” but this is despicable. Watch for yourself:

Apparently, Cargile believes this is a moral issue, but unfortunately, his moral standard is collectivism. He ignores entirely the morality of a civilized country inasmuch as he openly attacks private property rights, private wealth, and the freedom to choose. Reading between the lines, he’s advocating some sort of government-enforced price control at the very least, and perhaps even complete expropriation at the worst. This implies violence. In order to enforce such a thing, what one is saying is that one is ready to kill people in order to take their things if they do not otherwise consent.

The host, for his part, is no better. He smears the owners of the rights to the Hepatitis C treatment under discussion as people who are merely out to profit, first, as if profit is somehow an evil, and second in that they might use that profit to “buy a new Ferrari.” This shameful broadcast merely confirms my contention that FoxNews is all about co-opting conservatism. There’s nothing remotely conservative in this, Cargile’s protests about his continuing devotion to the free market notwithstanding.

For those who don’t understand the principles involved, let us be clear: If you invent a thing, and I purchase the rights to that thing from you, my moral claim to the thing in question is every bit as legitimate as yours when you had invented the thing. More, since it’s now my thing, I have the absolute right to buy it and sell it as I see fit, and the only moral method by which to obtain it is to pay the price at which we arrive by mutual consent. Any government interference in that exchange, either to my benefit or to a purchaser’s, is tyranny.

What Cargile advocates in this clip is tyranny. What the hapless Mr. Shawn approvingly supports is no different from what Hugo Chavez had imposed in that poor, enslaved, collapsing communist state that is Venezuela: Communism. The closer we get to complete collapse, and the more people begin to shrug their shoulders over the concepts and moral standing of individual rights, the more rapidly our collapse will accelerate.

One might argue, as the communists at FoxNews seem to insist, that there is some maximum amount that ought to be charged for some life-saving, or quality-of-life-preserving drug or treatment. My question for you is: Had I Hepatitis C, how much of my earnings would I forego for how long a period to finance a cure? Is there any amount of money I would not pay? One might argue, as the dolts on FoxNews have done here, that such a burden is unaffordable, and use this as a justification to steal. Theft via government action is still theft, even though done under color of law. The fact that the government was placed in office by vote does not reduce the significance of the crime, but merely multiplies the number of criminals and broadens the expanse of the guilt(though its concentration is not diluted.)

With this sort of thing becoming the norm on FoxNews, as further evidence of the spread of collectivist ethics throughout the culture, we cannot and will not last.

There has long been a legal theory that the states have the right under our constitution to nullify such federal laws as they may unilaterally determine to be unconstitutional. One of its earliest proponents was Vice President John C. Calhoun, who had hoped to employ the strategy in a dispute over tariffs. His modern-day adherents wish to pursue this strategy anew. The problem is that the idea has been roundly rejected by the federal judiciary, and one would have a difficult time demonstrating a successful historical precedent. Most recently, in the 1950s, and 1960s, states in the South attempted to nullify federal law on the matter of desegregation. In 1958, in Cooper v. Aaron, the state of Arkansas attempted to nullify the US Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In another attempt at the related concept of interposition, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s decision to reject Louisiana’s attempt to maintain segregation of the schools. Repeatedly, the US courts have rejected attempts at nullification or interposition, and in that case, effectively derided such attempts as “no more than a protest, an escape valve through which legislators blew off steam to relieve their tensions…” In short, while the proponents of these two strategies will continuously argue that theirs is the proper approach to our growing constitutional crisis, there is very little in the way of case-law or constitutional law to support their assertions. Bluntly, the constitution says what it says, and we can no more imagine into it a nullification doctrine than we may assert any other ghostly doctrine into its text. No apparitional legal doctrine is necessary while the constitution provides a solution within its text.

Some would claim that the states of Colorado and Washington, among others, are engaged in an act of nullification with respect to their legalization of marijuana. The problem with this is that neither of these states have claimed to have the authority to indemnify citizens involved in the marijuana trade against federal law. If federal law enforcement agencies decide to crack down in either of these states, or any other, you will quickly see that there is no nullification of any sort, and neither of the states have claimed a right to interpose between residents and the federal establishment.

With all of this in mind, it begs the question: Why do proponents of this particular, historically ineffectual legal doctrine continue to press forward? The answer may lie in a sort of juvenile disregard for established authority and case-law. Their claims rest on John C. Calhoun’s basic assertion of a state’s right to nullify federal law, and to interpose between the federal government and its residents. As we have seen, such claims have never been upheld in any substantive manner by the federal judiciary, and Calhoun also asserted the right of secession. In 1832, the theory of nullification had its first significant trial, in what would come to be termed the Nullification Crisis. In this case, South Carolina’s legistlature declared the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 to be unconstitutional. The state claimed a sovereign authority to ignore the federal statute, and began military preparations to resist federal enforcement. A compromise Tariff was enacted in 1833, and South Carolina repealed its nullification ordinance. Both sides claimed victory, but the federal establishment had been preparing to enforce the 1832 Tariff by force if need be, and had enacted a statute for those purposes.

Naturally, the Civil War was in part about the authority of states to nullify, ignore, or otherwise refuse to comply with federal law, or to interpose between the federal government and states’ residents. The entire Southern strategy during the 1950s and 1960s was to attempt various forms of nullification or interposition. All such attempts failed in the face of federal use of force or the threat thereof. One can scarcely imagine why it would be that contemporary proponents of these approaches would continue to advocate the unworkable. It is as much a senseless, juvenile approach to the serious problems of federal overreach as any sort of serious movement. The end of the nullification movement will come on the day the federal establishment decides it is time to dispense with it, and begins to strictly impose its will on those who would actually attempt it. It begins to take on the character of a ranting, stomping toddler, who when deprived of his pacifier, throws a tantrum that has no force and no standing.

It is important to understand that what is in the constitution is in the constitution, and what isn’t there simply isn’t. While one can point to this statement or that of some framers of the US Constitution for authority for nullification or interposition, where one cannot point with any credibility is the US Constitution itself. More, one cannot show any successful case history upholding this approach. It simply doesn’t exist, contrary to the bleating of the sheep who have been roped into this thinking. They speak often of natural rights, and as a proponent of natural law, I am always willing to listen to such arguments, but I am also a realist in the sense that setting all of the flowery speech about natural rights aside, the problem always lies in the legal recognition of said rights. Like some of nullification’s proponents, I long for the day when the full scope of natural rights of man are recognized and enforced at all levels of government, but I also understand that in order to see such a formal recognition, it will take explicit changes to our constitution to enforce the claims we might make to them. Rights must exist in the text of our laws, or risk doing without them. As we have seen in administration after administration, and Congress after Congress, there exists no shortage of those who will extend federal law to every conceivable extent because there is no explicit warrant against it in the US Constitution. The ninth and tenth amendments notwithstanding, it has ever been that an existing federal law seems in nearly all cases to trump a claimed right not explicitly guaranteed.

With all of this in mind, I wish the nullifiers well, and I hope when they’ve blown off some of the steam, they’ll come ’round to a more rational, proven approach. We can amend our constitution, and we can do so by two explicit methods laid forth by Article V. One need not search for the political writings of John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, or even James Madison or Thomas Jefferson to affect change under our constitutional system. Instead, one need observe only its text, applying the counsel provided by history to embark on a course already established.

Some of the “nullifiers” deride Mark Levin’s efforts toward an Article V amending convention of the states, writing in ominous tones about the potential for a “runaway convention.” This sort of scare tactic is the sort of thing one might expect from people bent on their own agenda, and while caution is always merited when fiddling around with our supreme law, I think it’s also fair to suggest that we can do so without substantial danger. Do I endorse all of Levin’s proposed amendments? No. Do I think many of them have merit? Absolutely! Do I believe we can afford to further obfuscate the matter by pursuing phantasms of nullification that have never availed a peaceable, workable solution? No. I do not wish to pour energy and resources into the pursuit of a doctrine held to be little more than a temper-tantrum. Let us admit that to restore our constitutional system, we must first resolve to live within its bounds as a matter of faithfulness to its principles. That’s the whole point, after all, so that if Article V was good enough for our framers, then it shall likewise be good enough for me.

I’m not among the millions who regularly watch Duck Dynasty on A&E network, but I am among the many millions who will avoid the network in my future viewing choices. The network’s #1 smash hit is headed by patriarch Phil Robertson. Robertson was asked during an interview for GQ magazine about morality. He cited the Bible, and when asked to explain or expound upon his stance on homosexuality, he explained in graphic, somewhat crude language why he couldn’t understand the desires of homosexuals. The network then suspended him. What’s now clear is that A&E has managed to incite a backlash against the network, and it’s obvious that the network is responding to political rather than market-based concerns. In the free market, a network wouldn’t suspend the star of its top-rated show for simply stating his religious beliefs. No, this case isn’t about the intolerance of Phil Robertson, but the intractable, unflinching orthodoxy of the rabid left. The intolerance is all theirs, but there exists a dirty little secret: They’re only willing to shut down conservatives, Christians, and capitalists, while they cringe in fear of Muslims, feminists, leftist groups, and the homosexual lobby. There’s an important lesson in all of this for conservatives generally, but Christians particularly: They don’t fear you, and you’ve given them no reason to think otherwise.

Consider the lead-in to Drew Magary’s GQ article:

“How in the world did a family of squirrel-eating, Bible-thumping, catchphrase-spouting duck hunters become the biggest TV stars in America? And what will they do now that they have 14 million fervent disciples?”

Could a news outlet or magazine make such a remark about any group if they happened to be other than Christian? This lead-in typifies the mindset not merely of those in leadership at A&E, but of the entire media establishment. “Bible-thumping?” Who does Magary think he is? Bill O’Reilly? This should set the tone for you quite aptly. With a lead-in like that, you can guess that it won’t be long before the GQ writer seeks to create a controversy. The term “Bible-Thumper” has become so widely used in the media that Christians are now adopting it to describe themselves as a way of scorning the elites who look down their noses at Christians generally.

Before pointing this out, Magary mocks Robertson this way:

“Even though he’s in the far corner of the room, Phil dominates the house. There are times when he doesn’t look you in the eye while he’s speaking—he looks just off to the side of you, as if Jesus were standing nearby, holding a stack of cue cards. Everyone else in the room just stares at his phone, or at the TV, or holds side conversations as Phil preaches.”

As disgusted as Christians, conservatives, and Duck Dynasty fans may be with A&E’s treatment of Robertson, let’s consider this jewel of mockery by Magary on behalf of GQ magazine. This isn’t merely an attack on Robertson, but on every Christian who is guided by faith. Magary’s scornful, scowling article shows Robertson in the very light that his magazine’s readers have come to expect. Later in the article, however, Magary provides the Robertson quote that will rile the left endlessly:

“For the sake of the Gospel, it was worth it,” Phil tells me. “All you have to do is look at any society where there is no Jesus. I’ll give you four: Nazis, no Jesus. Look at their record. Uh, Shintos? They started this thing in Pearl Harbor. Any Jesus among them? None. Communists? None. Islamists? Zero. That’s eighty years of ideologies that have popped up where no Jesus was allowed among those four groups. Just look at the records as far as murder goes among those four groups.”

All of this was far too much for the leftists at A&E. They’re a politically correct outlet, and Robertson’s off-show remarks are far too insensitive in their view, and attacked their general philosophical slant. If only he were a Muslim…

Fans aren’t happy with this suspension either, and the backlash is growing, as a new Facebook page that has already garnered nearly seven-hundred-thousand likes, and there are other pages on the social networking site having similar results. While there can be no expectation of “free speech” on a network one doesn’t own, this sort of cultural brow-beating is standard fare in leftist circles. In his contract, there may be language prohibiting him from making such statements publicly, in which case he is bound by the terms of the contract, but here’s the real problem for A&E: While they are free to suspend him if his contract allows it, they are also bound to bear the consequences in the marketplace. If the market recoils against them, and if they find even more people joining the fray of public discourse against them, it’s all their problem. If the move gains the network market-share, then it’s all their benefit.

With that said, let’s consider what had been Robertson’s “infraction,” according to A&E. Robertson dared to state publicly in an interview that he held as sins those things set forth in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Indeed, he then explained his own orientation. From the Chicago Tribune:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he told reporter Drew Magary. “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

“It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

Now that the homosexual lobby is descending upon Robertson, one might wonder why leftist groups and others sympathetic to the homosexual lobby have all the courage in the world to take on Christians at every turn, but never seem to muster the same courage when dealing with Muslims. If, rather than a show titled “Duck Dynasty,” and being a Christian man named Phil Robertson, this had instead been a show named “Kamel Kingdom,” centered around a Wahhabist family headed by a man named Muhammed Atta on the Arabian peninsula, the whining cowards at the A&E network wouldn’t have dared to suspend the patriarch. Not a chance. Christians are easy targets, after all. They’ve become accustomed to being culturally attacked, and desensitized to being harangued publicly for their views. They do not fight back, generally speaking. Muslims are another story. In fact, A&E may have actually blocked the mention of Jesus on Duck Dynasty in order to avoid offending Muslims. Watch this video with Phil Robertson:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_0XS1vaX-M]

There’s a lesson in all of this for those who happen to pay attention: Christians may temporarily blow up your phone lines, but they won’t blow up your building, and executives at the A&E network know that too well. They can stand to tolerate a few days of melted phone lines, but once the issue fades in prominence, they’ll go on as before. The leftist media culture is rife with bullies who are willing to pick on faithful Christians, but won’t say the first word in opposition to radical Islam, or even acknowledge its existence, lest they find themselves the target of a fatwa. I’m not suggesting that Christians should strap suicide vests on their bodies and run into the A&E Network’s headquarters, but I think this helps to demonstrate that Christians, who mistakenly turn the other cheek until they’re beaten into submission. Christians don’t fight back. They have been taught that only the “meek” shall inherit the Earth, not understanding the real meaning of Matthew 5:5. It was an admonition to submit to God. It was not a demand to lay supinely in acceptance of any torment in the offing from all comers.

Christians and conservatives must begin to understand the affliction that they too readily bear. Consisting in part of the radical left’s tireless war against American culture, this is a real campaign being fought daily. The left, radical Islam, the associated and cohort groups all bear ill will against traditional Christian values, and American ideals and traditions in general, either to subvert them or erase them from our nation. A&E’s fault in all of this lies in the fact that they are more afraid of people who do not regularly watch their network than of those who routinely tune to see Phil Robertson and his family. A&E is more interested in portraying the Robertson clan as backwoods bayou bumpkins than in showing a God-fearing family that accepts the teachings of their Bible. They don’t want to offend Muslims, homosexuals, or anyone else in the process, unless they happen to be capitalists, Christians, and/or conservatives, in which case it is not merely acceptable but entirely intentional. Christians and conservatives must begin to make their voices heard in unison, because it’s their culture that is under fire. The time for cheek-turning should have passed, and it’s high time conservative leaders step forward to say as much.

Thankfully, some already have. (Sarah Palin here, Ted Cruz here, and Bobby Jindal here.) Now it’s your turn. As the rabid left seeks to turn the GQ Robertson interview into the 2013 version of Rush Limbaugh’s Sandra Fluke remarks, conveniently taking the focus away from Obama-care, it’s time for conservatives, particularly Christians, to understand all of these things as a coordinated attack against them. While A&E is a shameless trollop acting on behalf of the general leftist ideology, they are performing a service to Barack Obama that money could scarcely buy. Obama-care’s massive failures are sliding from the headlines, and this changing of the subject over a TV show will permit them to carry on. The truth for conservatives in general and Christians in particular is that the left doesn’t fear you. They see you as having been de-fanged by your own ethos, and they use your most generous virtues against you. It’s time to see them for the monsters they are, speak out at will, and make all of your purchasing decisions accordingly. It’s time for them to fear your market power if they will fear nothing else. It’s time for them to fear you at the polls if they will see no other threat from your number. It’s long past the time for all real Americans to roar and I don’t care if the statist left sneers at that description. The time for silence on all fronts is over. They need to fear the continuance of their Jihad against us.

Editors Note: The truth about A&E and its show is that it was never intended to capture the audience it now enjoys, but was instead meant as a vehicle by which to mock Christians and conservatives. Once it backfired and became a wildly successful show, they had to find a way to bury it culturally.For what other possible reason would they place beeps and bleeps in the audio track to cover profanity that never occurred, as per Robertson’s testimony in the video above? They wanted to reinforce a stereotype.

Update: As of this hour, the boycott A&E page on Facebook now has over 1.1 Million likes.

Seldom is there a shortage of stupid, insipid, vapid ideas in the mainstream media, but lately, it’s coming from every direction. I was watching the idiot at 8pm(Eastern) on the diminishing network that is Fox News, when he promoted an upcoming segment featuring Michele Bachmann(R-MN.) The segment has not yet played, and I’m not really interested in anything this perpetual TV dipstick has to say, so I was not surprised at the vacuous formulation of his segment, based on a recent McClatchy-Marist poll: “Why are the American people still more dis-satisfied with Republicans than Democrats?” Let me suggest an answer that refuses to evade the obvious, irrespective of what Bachmann may or may not say in response, and howsoever the bloviating 8pm-er may otherwise characterize it. It’s really a simple math problem, and it’s time we ask goof-balls like O’Reilly to understand mathematics. There is one reason Republicans are doing more poorly in Congressional approval polls, and it is not because they’re not moderate enough. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

Various surveys tell us that roughly 20-25 percent of the populace considers itself liberal. As much as 42 percent consider themselves conservative. The rest consider themselves mushy moderates and independents. Let me suggest that we break this up into a simpler math question: If 33 percent of respondents approve of Democrats in Congress, that is roughly equivalent to the number of avowed liberals and a portion of the “moderates” who are simply embarrassed liberals hoping to maintain some semblance of non-partisan cover. The rest of the country hates the Democrats, including some actual moderates. Meanwhile, the same 33 percent can be counted on to hate the Republicans. One might then think that since 40-45 percent of the populace considers themselves conservative, Republicans would gain the benefit. Actually, it’s not like this at all. You see, since Republicans register around 25 percent approval, let us then admit that the group most likely to be adding to disapproval of Republicans isn’t the moderates, but instead, the conservatives. 42 percent plus 33 percent equals 75 percent. While I am confident there will be some instances in which this isn’t precisely true, the obvious answer is that the Democrats are disapproved less because their own core constituents support them relentlessly. In contrast, conservatives who constitute the core of the Republican constituency are as unhappy with Republicans as liberals are. Only squishy moderates like O’Reilly support Republicans.

This is not difficult math, so simple in fact, that even a mindless dolt like O’Reilly should be able to figure it out. The problem is, however, that it’s only easy to see if one is willing to see it. O’Reilly isn’t willing to see anything that contradicts the DC orthodoxy. When O’Reilly implies that it’s all because Republicans are too immoderate, he’s evading the truth, because it’s not a truth he wants to purvey. If the Republicans in Congress were interested in getting a better approval rating, they wouldn’t push ridiculous “bi-partisan” budget deals like the one now being offered by Paul Ryan(R-WI) and his Senate counterpart, the estimable Patty Murray(D-WA.) Conservatives are rightly disgusted with this and other deals, and the explicit unwillingness of Congressional Republicans to fight. 42 percent plus 33 percent equals 75 percent. Mathematical wizardry is not required. All one needs is a commitment to the simple truth, and that’s something Bill O’Reilly plainly lacks.

(Editor’s Note: Apparently, the math escaped Bachmann too, because her explanation turned out to be that the media is against Republicans, which while true, doesn’t answer the heart of the question.)

On Tuesday, Mr. L had more than a few choice words for Barack “Mugabe” Obama. The nation is becoming understandably angry with Obama, and he’s more than tired of the dirt-bag politicians who are interested in compromising with Obama and the rest of the statist left. There’s no point to offering compromise only to be rebuffed by Obama and his henchmen. Frankly, Rand Paul should know better. Mr. L gets it right: No more compromise. Another excellent presentation from Mr. L:

Unsure as I am as to how much longer I will be able to maintain this blog, it is my intention to cover a few topics of significant gravity, whatever else may come next. There are certain things a man must be willing to discuss, whatever the cost, because the cost of silence is infinitely higher. What I will address hereunder is one such subject, dire though its context may be, simply because you should be made aware of it. As you already perceive at an almost instinctual level, we are losing the United States. As many of us have feared for at least the last five years, this will be due neither to an outside attack, nor even to the creeping, rotting decay now consuming our culture. Instead, we may now lose the country to the direct predations of an attack from within, launched by those entrusted with defending it. This attack is likely to come in the form of the final, functional abolition of our constitution. The precedents will have been set, and the last of the remaining constitutional checks and balances will have been removed by fiat. Barack Obama intends to seize vast unconstitutional powers, and we shall see the rise of a dictator in the full blossom of his tyrannical authority.

The final assault on the fabric of our constitution will be launched by constitutional law professors working in concert with an aggressive executive who will with crisis-born pretense impose his dicta upon this nation. The script is already written. The pieces are nearly in place. “Go-time” is drawing near, because this will be his last great opportunity to finally, fundamentally transform this nation into a cesspool of totalitarianism. Conservatives will call for his impeachment, to no avail, as the US Senate is controlled by his philosophical cohorts. There will be no undoing this peaceably, whatever some, even those near and dear to us may claim. I believe the probability is unusually high that we will now witness the final days of the Republic you had known, and this historic human tragedy will be visited upon the people of the United States by Barack Hussein Obama, a criminal now ensconced in the office of the United States Commander-in-Chief, who has previously hinted at his dictatorial inclinations.

Mark Levin has discussed this, even on Thursday, explaining how Barack Obama will make a claim of constitutional authority for which there is no reasonable or valid claim anywhere in its text. Levin still clings to a thread of hope that somehow, we will at some future date reverse this disastrous, wretched attack on our Republic by restoring it through constitutional process without reference to Washington DC. If he will have been correct, at some future date, we would find ourselves able to reverse this attack by virtue of constitutional amendments instigated by the states, but such will not be plausible, or even possible, if Barack Obama makes this lethal claim of authority. For years, leftists have been making the claim that there lies within the fourteenth amendment the authority for a President to ignore the debt ceiling in satisfying the debts of the United States. While such claims have no rational basis, the amendment itself stating nothing of the sort, and with a Congress composed of sufficient statesmen of both parties in both houses who would oppose it, there might be a chance. Sadly, we no longer have such a Congress. The President need not worry about opposition even from the House, where Republican leaders continue to plot the undermining of the country in concert with Barack Obama.

Here’s the segment of Levin’s show in which he discusses the threat posed by Obama’s anti-constitutional plot:

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While many of us may have been surprised pleasantly to see Boehner and Cantor standing somewhat more firmly than in recent budget impasses, they are merely playing their assigned roles now. If Levin’s warning is correct, they will scarcely be relevant to what is about to happen to our Republic. Barack Obama has been talking-down the stock market, and he’s brought the captains of finance into his offices for discussions. Wall Street wants the borrowing and printing to continue unabated. They’re making out like bandits, robbing us blind by paying paltry sums of interest on money being dumped by the wagon-load into the markets. They want the gravy-train to continue, and the President is willing to let them for now. You see, like all such men of finance, they have accepted a well-worn lie about the power of capital and the efficacy of money. They believe money is the source of all power, and that as the cliche goes, it “makes the world go ’round.” They have certainly adopted happily the notion of the bastardized form of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” The problem is that their thesis is wrong, and in the end, they’re going to learn it. Money is not a cause, but merely an effect. You see, Barack Obama studied under a different philosophy, one that references directly the most ruthless of his philosophical antecedents, Mao Zedong, who in brevity offered:

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The Wall Street types don’t understand this. Obama understands this too well, having been mentored by radicals Ayers and Davis, who taught him the value of force, and who understood that only violence and its threat actually enforce political power. The men of high finance are those who have learned that money can buy anything, but their lessons were corrupt. They believe politicians are always open to bribes, and why wouldn’t they? What they do not understand is that there exists a class of true believers, some good but many evil, who are not subject to this sort of temptation because of the strength of their beliefs. I now believe Barack Obama may well be one such man, because his vision for America trumps any number of dollars you might offer him. Bother now to ask yourselves what sort of historical monsters could not have been tempted from their pursuit of naked power for any amount of wealth, knowing that on their path, they will have access to all the wealth they could ever need. Attempt to understand by asking of yourself: “How does an unarmed man in the proverbial dark alley bribe a pistol-waving mugger to take only some of his cash?” This is the question these captains of finance and wizards of stock markets have blinded themselves from seeing. They still think there’s something to negotiate. Suffice it to say that by the time Obama is done with them, they will have asked themselves that question, even if much too late to matter.

Ask the Swiss bankers who folded like cheap napkins when Obama’s IRS went demanding account information on Americans. How many potential opponents were then neutered forevermore? What do you think that was about, anyway? What do you think Dodd-Frank is about? Those who couldn’t wait to heap more regulations on the financial industry will soon learn the full impact of that law. So will the average American when he learns his deposits are subject to be frozen or seized by whim of the chief executive and the Secretary of the Treasury acting at his behest.

All Obama now needs is an excuse, and the Republicans in Congress will give it to him, and he will be justified by all the lunatics who call themselves “constitutional scholars” he has brought along with him. These will be people who do not need the arm-twisting that was used on John Roberts in order to see things the President’s way on Obama-care. These are other true-believers. They see their arguments as being full of the same holes you and I see, but that doesn’t matter so much as the fact that they will make them, insistently, irrespective of all facts, all standards of language, and all legal precedents. Their only job is to buy Obama the time he will need for the controversy over his intended act(s) to die down, and for Mr. and Mrs. America to return to their football, their NASCAR, their baseball games, their “reality TV,” and the myriad other distractions that will seem more pressing and much less boring than an argument over the President’s constitutional authority or evident lack thereof. In that moment, the Republic’s death will be imminent.

If the President can concoct any old excuse to ignore his constitutional limitations, no matter how perfectly absurd or patently unreasonable the justification, the constitution will be dead. Absent the constitution, the Republic will no longer exist, and what you had known as the United States of America might still linger a while, even years, but its fundamental core, and its beating heart will have been stilled even if there is still a dimming signal for a while emitted by its expiring brain. What will he do? Clearly, all the evidence exists that he intends at some point to initiate a maneuver by which he will claim an extraordinary authority in the face of a real or concocted emergency from which he will promise to save us all, while driving the final nails in the casket of the Republic. Worst of all, he is now and has been conspiring to create that crisis. The time has now arrived for this nestling to take wing.

He has been talking a good deal about how Congress must pay the debts it has previously incurred, but this too is tortured language because Congress hasn’t incurred a debt until it’s borrowed the money. What he intends is that by the “full faith and credit” clause of the fourteenth amendment, he will simply issue an executive order seizing control of the treasury. There is some precedent for this, having been done in lesser measure by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, claiming the aegis of a vast emergency “almost as great as that of war,” and using the “Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917” as subsequently amended. Obama will make the same tyrannical claim, but he is much more self-assured than even Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he intends to carry it to its logical conclusion this time. He will ignore the legal debt ceiling, claiming the fourteenth amendment compels him to act. Close attention to the amendment reveals that only Congress is mentioned in that amendment, and there is no mention of additional executive authority. This is the moment of the trick. This is where he will step across all constitutional boundaries and forevermore become a dictator, and since he will be largely unopposed, who will object? Harry Reid? John Boehner?

What the last week has taught the President is that he is running out of time. The mood of the country is such that he now rightly expects that on our present course, he will not re-take the House in 2014, and he will be lucky to hold the Senate. If he loses the Senate, his chances to take such actions will have elapsed, because Congress and the Republicans would be in a position to at least theoretically impeach and remove him from office if he threatened the Republic. His time is dwindling, and his opportunities to take these steps are expiring as well. Now may be his last, best hope to finally and irreversibly transform the United States to its fundamental core by wrecking the constitution that had been its beating heart, however bruised and damaged, for these last two-hundred years. He and those who have helped him obtain office and maintain it are too close, having come too far to let it all slip away now. Their goal is within reach. All they need now is to grab it.

“As to the proposition that the 14th Amendment provides some authority for the President to circumvent Congress, this is a preposterous claim. The relevant sections of the Fourteenth Amendment states:”

“Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

“Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”

“Notice that section 4 was intended to deal specifically with war debt accrued by the Union in fighting against the Confederacy during the civil war. The leftists who advocate on behalf of section 4 as a proscription against a debt ceiling are lunatics. It not only requires the setting aside of the context of the amendment, but also ignoring the subsequent section, that specifically empowers Congress to enact legislation pursuant to this amendment.”

We need not wonder any longer as to whether this amendment provides an actual constitutional basis for the actions Obama now contemplates. Flatly, it does not, and only the sort of tortured mind that labors in the basement of the Brookings Institute in devoted service to all things statist could imagine otherwise.

I relate this information not to frighten readers, but in order to arm them with the facts. The media will launch endless arguments if Obama should attempt this, and they will, along with academia, conspire to provide him the needed delay. Mark Levin still expresses the opinion that his prescription, using Article V of the US Constitution to amend it without the cooperation of Congress, and one must certainly give him all due credit for bringing that strategy to life, and we must try it, but I fear that Dr. Levin is grasping at straws in light of this development. What evidence exist to suggest that this or any Congress would act to obey Article V of the US Constitution. (By some counts, Congress has already received sufficient petitions from states to recognize a convention of the states.) If Obama attempts this, and Congress and the courts permit him to get away with it, the constitution will be dead. At that point, Article V is most probably moot, along with the rest of our founding document, and the supreme law of the land will have shifted indefinitely (and probably permanently) from that noble piece of aged parchment to the whim and will of Barack Hussein Obama. Game over.

You may wonder how he will justify all of this, but you need only let your imagination expand to the limits of what this malignant narcissist sees as his mandate and his authority. He is conspiring even now to collapse the US economy, which is why he now speaks specifically of “economic collapse.” This is why he’s going out of his way to scare the fire out of Wall Street. He and his friend Ben Bernanke have built the biggest bubble in the history of man, and he intends to burst it. Even before Labor Day this year, the price of gasoline had begun to fall. It’s still falling, and in the main, this is because general demand is low as the economy remains barely above water. To the degree the economy remains afloat at all, it is riding on an over-inflated life-preserver made up of borrowed money, leveraged assets, and consumer credit stretched to the breaking-point. College student loans now represent trillions of dollars of debt, since the government took over the administration of Federally-Guaranteed student loans. How hard do you really think Obama will need to work in order to explode the entire US economy by the 17th of October, when we reach the legal debt ceiling(which we’ve already actually surpassed, illegally?) That good old debt clock to which only a few Americans pay even scant attention has been frozen in place for more than four months. Do you really believe they haven’t exceeded it?

Obama was never going to negotiate with the Republicans. If they had passed a “clean” continuing resolution, he’d have concocted some reason to reject it with Harry Reid’s help in the Senate. Of course, at this late date, the Republicans would be foolish to do anything but stand fast, or risk losing such credibility as circumstances have afforded them. At this point, all they can do is press for maximum advantage, while trying to arouse popular sentiment against the President so long as they are able. Once before in our history, the financiers conspired with a president to set us on a similar course in justification of all he would thereafter do, but now we have a president who has set them up, and he’ll be using them for his purposes in a manner that the likes of Chairman Mao would approve.

By undertaking this approach, Barack Obama is signaling that he is ready to go for it all. In this moment of national turmoil, we will emerge either as a dictatorship with a smiley-face concealing big government’s scowl like a putrid death-mask, or we will find we had somehow prevailed and the President will become the longest serving lame duck in our nation’s history. This will be for all the marbles. It is at this point that we must reconsider that great intellectual benefactor of the Republic who urges us to follow the path laid down in Article V to reforge our Republic. Dr. Levin educates as much as any in the public eye, and his breadth and depth of knowledge on the subject of constitutional law knows few bounds. Still, in light of Obama’s presumed aggressive strategy against the Republic, one wonders if an Article V undertaking would gain any traction so long as we suffer under an Executive that willingly denies, ignores, and tramples the constitution. What good would it be if the United States government would refuse to recognize amendments instigated by a convention of the states and subsequently ratified by them?

At long-winded last comes the danger: If Obama undertakes this strategy as some now urge, and others now dread, our President will be in open insurrection against the Republic. He will be acting in clear opposition to the plain language of the supreme law of the land. At stake will be the question: “What is the supreme law of the land? The constitution, or the contrived edicts of Obama?” If the latter is permitted to stand, the United States of America will have perished. I have no hope that a popular majority of Americans now possess and will maintain sufficient outrage to compel a presidential retrenchment, else Obama-care would never have become law, much less seen its first days of implementation. This begs the question I would not now ask you to answer aloud: “What are you prepared to do?” Civil disobedience? What? Don’t answer this in words, but instead ponder the question, and decide for yourselves now what your answer will be when it comes to the real asking.

If Barack Obama is permitted to abscond with our constitution and its checks on his power, we might just as well bulldoze that memorial our aged heroes have visited, for its very meaning – their meaning – will have been lost along with the proposition that ours is a nation of laws but not men. This is what Barack Obama seeks most to overturn, and with it, to bear forth that most fundamental transformation with which he’s been threatening a nation and her people. At present, the best the American people can hope is to dissuade him from that course by open chastisement and vocal disapproval. The time may be drawing near when we will be compelled by events to answer that most dangerous question, and with its answer, to decide in finality whether we will remain a free people or submit to a brutal despotism of historic proportions. The choice remains yours.

It’s rather novel these days to see Republicans standing and fighting for the American people. They always claim to agree with us, but over the last several years, it has seemed that they would start a fight, ask us to man the ramparts, and then sneak out through the secret passage in the back of the keep. This time is different, and while I am wary of potential pitfalls, as should you be, I sense that the Republicans are discovering much to their happy amazement that Americans are supporting them in this battle over the continuing resolution and Obama-care. What the House Republicans and not a few Republican Senators need is to get their heads out of the Washington DC murk. In the nation’s capital, there’s little chance they’ll get a sense of sentiment throughout the country. They hear and see the mainstream media memes, assuming what they’re hearing is actually representative of the country at large, but it’s not even close. Republicans in Washington DC must recognize that by adhering to their principles and promises, they are going a long way to influence this fight, and the American people outside the DC bubble know what’s going on. The Democrats know too, because the media is on their side, but back in their districts and states, they’re catching Hell. If the Republicans will hang tough and simply do the right thing, the American people will join with them in greater numbers to beat back the Democrats.

The sad fact is that Democrats know too well how badly this is going against them, despite the mainstream media’s attempts to re-write facts in favor of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the whole DC mob. Meanwhile, Republicans do not understand that the whole media picture is being aimed at influencing them. The beltway bubble doesn’t want to divulge what the average American thinks about Obama-care or the shutdown. Instead, it’s all about pressuring the Republicans and creating an environment in which the Republicans feel so thoroughly set-upon that they will crumble. Of course, we have a few bone-headed Republicans who have bought into this, but the truth is that we don’t need them anyway. Republicans should look at what’s going on in their districts, and how the average American out here in fly-over country thinks, and then realize that Obama and Reid are merely fabricating a spectacle with the special effects of the media establishment in order to make them believe they are losing.

This is why over the last twenty-four hours, the Democrats have become so shrill. They know they are losing, and for a change, more Republicans are seeing through the smokescreen to realize they are winning where it counts: With the American people. As evidence mounts that Obama-care is an unmitigated catastrophe for the American people and the US economy, Democrats are doing all they can to obscure this behind a torrent of inflammatory verbiage. Naturally, as it turns out, it’s the Democrats who have been losing this debate, and now it has been revealed that the national Obama-care sign up phone number is 1-800-318-2590, or 1-800-(F)(1)(U)(C)(K)(Y)(O). Do you believe this could have been an accident? This president has been flipping-the-bird at the American people since he was inaugurated in 2009. How well do you suppose that will go over with the American people? The President’s “signature legislation” and biggest program can be accessed though a phone number that tells the American people the real nature of Obama-care. The Democrats are losing, and they know it.

Now is the time in which Republicans must discover that they’re winning by standing against this national tragedy. They should hear the voices of their constituents, to discover how terrible are the effects of Obama-care. We must help them understand, because inside the beltway, they’re being hammered mercilessly by Democrats and media that want them to believe that they’ll take the political black eye. They must stand now, or be finished as a political party, and at this point, they should continue to follow the strategy of sending individual funding bills to the Senate. If, they buckle, then they will lose, because not only will America at large abandon them, but their own base will turn away in disgust. This is no time for capitulation. This is the moment for which much of the country has been waiting these last five years, and if the Republicans lose sight of it now, they will lose forevermore. The truth is that they’re winning, and all they need to do to achieve victory is to stand their ground. Now, it’s not only the right thing to do, but the only rational alternative for weak-kneed politicians. The Democrats are self-destructing, and the more they and their cohorts in the media lie, the more Americans now see through the lies.

On Sunday Morning, David Gregory interviewed Senator Ted Cruz on NBC’s Meet the Press. Gregory questioned Cruz for several minutes, and what became clear from the outset was that it was Gregory’s aim to somehow trap the Texas Senator. Every question was formulated from the viewpoint of a Democrat. Every contention of Gregory was constructed to obscure the trainwreck that is Obama-care, or to shield Democrats from blame. At no point did Gregory attempt to understand the Senator, so that Cruz was obliged to make his case clearly despite Gregory. What Gregory tried to conceal most of all is who has been inflexible, and absolutist, and who has been unwilling to compromise. As usual, the Democrats, led by Harry Reid in the Senate and Barack Obama generally haven’t been willing to listen to any complaints from the American people, while they’ve been willing to do the bidding of big corporations, granting waivers, delays, and carve-outs under Obama-care. This interview is a study in how to go over the heads of a hostile press directly to the American people.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StT_aHBBWbA]

Senator Cruz is absolutely correct: If government shuts down, it will be because Democrats, particularly Senator Reid and President Obama, have been unwilling to listen to the American people.

Barack Obama is nothing if not audacious. It takes a bold liar to assert a falsehood with such vigorous certitude before such a large audience. It may be that he gets away with it because most of his audiences are hand-picked and vetted to eliminate rational people, relying instead on mobs of ignoramuses wherever he goes. One could hope that so many Americans would not be so chillingly vapid in their thinking, but then again, they have elected and re-elected a man who has lied to them repeatedly and fearlessly. Such a spectacle is only possible because so many people refuse to bother themselves with logic, and instead operate entirely on the basis of their wishes, projected into the political sphere. Ayn Rand [at least] once characterized such primitive atavism by comparing these politicians to cavemen. It’s true. In order to believe health-care is a right, never mind “affordable” health-care, one must arrive at the presupposition that the lives of other men and women exist at the disposal of any taker. It is to regard one’s fellow persons as slaves, so while Obama prattles on in contrived, dismissive sarcasm over the question, berating the Obama-care’s critics for calling the program the most dangerous law ever passed, somebody somewhere should take the time to explain to Americans why this law is worse even than the fugitive slave act, over the din of the chuckling drones. Health-care cannot be a right while men and women are free.

The first question we must ask is: “What is a right?” Some time ago, I answered that question when prompted by a font of Obamtastic ignorance on the subject of Internet access. Here was my answer:

“A right is a natural entitlement of liberty that requires the consent of no others for its exercise, and imposes no positive obligation upon any other. If what you propose requires the actions, property, or consent of others, it cannot be a “right.”

Let us consider some rights as contemplated by our founders and the philosophical understanding of the enlightened age, arising from such men as John Locke, among others. Our founders codified several such rights, and those rights are under assault by government. Free speech. Free exercise of religion. The right to keep and bear arms. The right to one’s life and liberty. The right to self-determination. The right to be secure in one’s property, papers and effects from unreasonable search and seizure. The right to obtain legal representation. The right to a speedy trial. The right to equal protection under law, that is, equitable treatment by government. One has a right to one’s income, one’s life and all the things one’s labor(physical or intellectual) produce.

Let us now consider the President’s oafish, dictatorial claim: That others must be held to provide medical services to any who may come to want or need them. After all, as Mark Levin pointed out recently, if Health-care is truly a right, then government must not be permitted to create any death panels, or limit any sort of care you might want or need. Of course, Obama hadn’t meant it when he said it, but he wanted those poor befuddled and bedazzled wishers in his audience to believe it. Instead, what Obama-care creates is dependency, misery, and slavery.

If Obama and the Democrats(and not a few dastardly Republicans) have their way, they will take over health-care in the United States in its entirety. Doctors will be fewer, and government will control them. Since no honest or competent practitioner will long subsist in such an environment, only the incompetent and the dangerously sloppy will remain. No decent person will choose to remain a slave to a government system if they have other options, and the caliber of people who comprise the average medical school student historically suggests that these are capable people who have nearly unlimited career choices before them. There will be a few great doctors who hang on until retirement, or until they can take it no longer, committed and devoted to their patients, but within a generation, most of the competent doctors will be gone, replaced by incompetents who one wouldn’t voluntarily permit to lance a boil on one’s buttock. They will be inept and sloppy. They will be attitudinally-corrupted. Having chosen to live as a slave, wouldn’t you be resentful after a time?

How can it be a right for one man to dictate the life of another? How can it be the right of some claimant to reach into the pocket or purse of another and extract cash at will, or make demands of another person’s time and labor? Only in a system in which slavery or indentured servitude is permissible can one find such a circumstance, and yet this is precisely what the President laughs-off as less than dangerous. Of course, it’s far worse than this implies, because if he has his way, the government will become the sole source(single-payer) and possess a monopoly over the entire medical field. Only then will the chuckling morons discover how little like a right health-care really is, as they are denied life-saving surgeries and treatments, and they are compelled to pay whatever price the government demands. They will discover that theirs is a claim without standing, and they will find no recourse anywhere within the borders of the United States. Since this country is among the few into which you can travel to obtain services on the open market(at present,) once it becomes another victim of the global socialization of health-care, one will find one’s options have run out, excepting perhaps only the super-rich, who will always be able to get their care somewhere, at some price.

This president is a shoddy creature, with a narrow ideological focus and an even narrower mind. To claim as a right that which others must provide is an infamous attack on the lives and rights of people everywhere. To do so laughingly expresses a contempt for human life and liberty so thoroughly inculcated as to be dangerously maniacal. Such master-minds always begin by making such claims, but in the end, they finish by leaving a trail of destruction in their wakes. Obama is no worse (so far) than his philosophical predecessors, but such a man bears watching, because at any given moment, he may decide to unleash himself from semi-civil, quasi-rational conduct. Proof of this thesis exists each time one tunes a television to see the latest rant of Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews or Lawrence O’Donnell. These men offer an insight into the sheer insanity that exists behind the relatively calm demeanor of Barack Obama, and it is precisely that sort of vile creature who can imagine his fellow-man as involuntary servants by claiming a right to their labor, their time, and indeed, their lives. What may be worse is that for all their pretense and feigned opposition, at least twenty-five Republican senators do not see fit to object.

One cannot have a right to the lives, labors or properties of others, but with a stunted intellect, too many of our countrymen now suppose that because laws may be enacted that would claim otherwise, they are immune from its reach, and therefore safe from its grasp. Only a people with nothing to offer, fulfilling the exact definition of worthlessness, could imagine their own safety in such a paradigm. This is what we must fight, and it is in the name of life, liberty and the pursuit of our own happiness that we must fight it. So long as men like Barack Obama imagine other men as their slaves, and servants to their personal whims, there can be no safety in any place or condition on Earth. It is time for conservatives to demand of their alleged leaders such behavior as would signify their awareness of this mortal threat. There can be no peace with this, so long as men and women claim to be free.

If it wasn’t clear before, it should be clear now. Virtually every one of the Republican senators who voted Friday with Harry Reid and the Democrats for cloture had precisely one motive, and it is the thing that has caused them to rise in indignant rage against Ted Cruz, particularly, but also Mike Lee and the others who sought to stop the vote. They were unmasked as charlatans and frauds, all of them. Once Ted Cruz and Mike Lee explained to you the dirty little secret behind the fraudulent, wholly symbolic vote, there could be no way for them to carry out their fraud and deception. These guys, all of them, each and every one, can now be said to have in John Kerry-fashion been for Obamacare before they were against it, and they know it. All of them. When the vote amending the bill and stripping the House language was passed just a little while later, it was a strict party-line vote, and every Republican voted against it, knowing it would not matter, and that they could no longer stop it. The first vote required at least a few Republicans to go along, where as the second required none. This is the scam. This is the trick. Every one of these worthless RINO senators then went out to make statements claiming to have voted for defunding Obama-care, when the truth is that each of those who voted with the Democrats in the first vote actually helped to ensure it would be funded.

Simply, Ted Cruz and his twenty-one hour speech addressed this point repeatedly, revealing the true reason for the establishment’s hatred of him. They claimed to have a difference with Cruz over tactics, and they surely do: He actually wanted to stop Obama-care, but you can bet every one of these weasels who voted for it have figured out some manner or method by which to make a [larger] fortune over their involvement in the law, somewhere, somehow. They voted for cloture because they want the issue behind them, and they want to make money from the suffering of millions of Americans that will result from this law. The Democrats are already raking it in, and they wanted in on the action. We know too well from the reporting of Peter Schweizer how the Washington DC profiteers function, and it’s clear that some of these Republicans are in on the game too. The only other possibility is that they are complete and utter cowards, or Manchurian Republicans, really stealth Democrats, but no matter which, these people are dirty politicians who have betrayed you.

Additionally, Orrin Hatch(R-UT) and the aptly named Jeff Flake(R-AZ)(see editor’s note below) didn’t even vote one way or the other on cloture(the first vote) instead opting to vote only on the amended bill, at which time both of these along with the rest on this list joined the other heroic nineteen in voting “no.” After enabling the amendment, stripping the de-funding language, these rotten villains wanted the cover of a “no” vote. “I voted against stripping the de-funding language.” Yes, but only after making it possible to amend the bill at all.

I saw Senator Wicker’s statement, and it was a laughable claim to have voted for de-funding. Ditto Cornyn. In fact, in some form, nearly every one of these senators made a similar statement, and they are all liars. They get away with this because we let them. We don’t bother explaining this to our less-informed brethren, and our less-informed brethren are likely only to see the senators’ statements, if anything, and since our less-informed brethren outnumber those of us who bother by a substantial margin, these bottom-feeding charlatans are able to get by in election cycle after election cycle faking their ways through.

In fact, of the nineteen who stood and voted against cloture, there are a few of them who supported amnesty, so I will be watching them closely. Almost all of these are solid conservatives in most every issue, and if they happen to be your senators, consider yourself lucky, and if both your senators are on this list, count yourself doubly so(Alabamans, Idahoans, and Kansans):

These seemed at least reasonably sincere in their intentions, in stark contrast to the for-it-before-against-it crowd in the first list. If you want to know why Cruz and Lee are hated for this, it is precisely because they exposed the frauds among the GOP senators. None on that first list should ever be considered “conservative” by any rational standard, given this vote. I’ll tell you another thing these two list separate: Those who will be able to mount a credible run for President from those who will not. Drop those from the second list who supported amnesty, and what you will see is the list that conservatives will consider among senators who might choose to run for the White House in 2016. Given the age of a few, and the expressed lack of ambition of others, that thins the herd considerably. Any who express ambitions for higher office ought to be judged sternly on the basis of their positions in political offices beforehand.

I hope my fellow conservatives will join with me in properly contending with the sell-outs who voted for cloture, enabling Harry Reid and the Democrats to strip the de-funding language from the House continuing resolution. In the end, Obama-care will be implemented only because Republicans had refused to stand in the breach and do the hard work for which we’ve elected them. Those who took on this job, like Cruz, Lee, Sessions, and just a few others deserve our support and our respect. The rest deserve a measure of contempt at least equal to that which they have shown for us, and for the oath they had sworn. In 2014, we need to send as many of these conniving, duplicitous Senators home as we are able. I’m starting with un-Texan John Cornyn. Texans are looking for his replacement now.

What Cruz and Lee exposed is the dirty little secret of DC Republicans: They aren’t interested in fighting if they can put on a show but keep the party going. When Cruz took to the floor for twenty-one hours and nineteen minutes, he did so from a sense of duty to the promises he had made when seeking office, and from a firm belief that we ought not have meaningless, symbolic votes that offer cover to people who are factually betraying us. If you wonder why there had been such a shrill reaction from some of his Republican colleagues, this is it: He exposed them as double-dealing frauds who claimed to oppose Obama-care while actually enabling its funding. Is it any wonder McCain was on the Senate floor making a perfect ass of himself? Was it any wonder he did so with the assistance of Reid, Durbin, and Schumer? I suppose if I were a duplicitous hack like McCain, or Cornyn, I too would be mad at Ted Cruz. As it is, I thank him and Mike Lee for showing us which Senators are really on our side, but also those who are not. The effort was magnificent, and we would do well to learn all we can from it, acting accordingly in future elections.

Beginning now.

Editor’s note: With apologies to Senator Flake, it appears he was otherwise engaged. Read the story here. Given his vote on the immigration bill, I still believe he is aptly named.

I’ve lived in Texas almost precisely one-half of my life. In that time, I think I’ve done a fair job of becoming a Texan, instead of trying to turn Texas into that which I had escaped. I’d like to thank Texans for their hospitality and patience as I’ve tried my best to assimilate. I like to say that I am an American by birth, and a Texan by choice, but the truth is that I couldn’t have become a Texan without the forbearance of natives. I’ve noticed a tendency over my years here in Texas among many immigrants to the state to immediately set about turning it into the sort of liberal bastions from which they had fled, making them little different from Mark Levin’s description: Locusts. Worse than the rank-and-file locusts are the carpetbaggers who come to Texas telling us how it ought to be more like their native states. What I’ve learned along the way to becoming a Texan(or the most reasonable facsimile a non-native can be) is that Texans don’t like to be poked and prodded with a good deal of politically-correct claptrap. “Say what’s on your mind, and move along, son.” That’s an important lesson, but I’d like to tell Texans about another class of people who may not hold their best interests at heart. These are the expatriated Texans who go to Washington DC forgetting what Texas is or what Texans hold dear. Today, I want to address one of these, who has spent a decade in Washington DC, and who is no longer a Texan, having been absorbed into the elitists’ ranks. Once upon a time, John Cornyn may have been a decent politician, but now it is clear that he isn’t really a Texan any longer, however he may have begun.

On Friday, he joined with Harry Reid,Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats as well as several Republican sell-outs in voting for cloture(the procedure by which debate is ended in the Senate and a vote is held) on the continuing resolution to fund government while blocking Obama-care. John Cornyn, after enabling the vote, then made a phony, impassioned speech against stripping the language from the bill that would have de-funded Obama-care. His vote for cloture enabled Harry Reid to carry out the modifications to the bill. So you see, John Cornyn will now tell Texans truthfully that he voted against funding Obamacare, but it’s only a half-truth. While being able to claim this with a straight face, the fact is that Obama-care could not have been funded had he merely remained resolute and stood with our “junior” senator Ted Cruz in opposing cloture on the bill. Whatever John Cornyn tells you from this day forward, you must know that on any and all issues, he will try to play both sides of the street, being for something before he’s against it, or being against something before he was for it. If I’ve learned anything about Texans in my twenty-four years here, it is that this is not the temperament or practice of a real Texan.

Real Texans stand for what they believe. Real Texans do not try to occupy both sides of a serious argument. Real Texans do not try to carry out a complete and utter fraud against the people in whose service they are sworn, or otherwise sully the oaths they have taken. John Cornyn has abandoned any claim to being a Texan, and since he is up for re-election in 2014, I am asking my fellow Texans, in just recognition of John Cornyn’s betrayals on this and other issues, to seek out an select an opponent worthy of replacing Mr. Cornyn as one of our two US Senators. While Ted Cruz has been busy doing us proud, John Cornyn has been busy undermining him. While Ted Cruz was fighting to defeat and defund Obama-care, John Cornyn has been back-stabbing and whipping other Republicans into supporting an affirmative vote on cloture.

This is a shameful situation. As our nation’s economy hobbles along, its latest burden in the form of Obama-care’s mandate is going to destroy what remains of the healthier segments of the economy. It is going to reduce the standard and availability of care for all Americans. It is going to result in the denial of care, not as a “bug” but as a “feature” of the program. It’s going to increase our national debt to knew heights. It’s already causing employers to cut hours for workers, and while many think that they’re somehow immune, it’s clear that many of these will soon learn otherwise. This law is so bad that they’ve exempted themselves. It’s so bad that the unions who supported it, like the Teamsters, are now in favor of repealing it, saying that they can “remain silent no longer.” All of this, John Cornyn and the other Republican sell-outs in the Senate have enabled. When you lose your health insurance or your job; your hours are cut or your treatment (or the treatment of a loved-one) is denied by Obama-care, you can blame John Cornyn as one of the conspirators in your undoing. You should know this. You must not let him get away with his duplicity.

I wanted my fellow Texans to know this, so that when in 2014, any opponent rises to challenge John Cornyn, I will get behind that candidate, and if he survives the primary process, I will vote for a Democrat. It is my long-considered conclusion that we are better off with lying Democrats who we know will be hard-core leftists than with lying Republicans who we cannot trust to abstain from betraying us. John Cornyn will hereafter be known on this site as the Un-Texan, because his behavior and maneuvering in this [and other] issues has earned him the highest contempt real Texans can muster. He will claim that it had been about a difference of opinion over tactics, but the truth is that he’s been following the lead and the advice of the DC consultancy, and he is doing now the bidding of political elements who care not for Texas or Texans. He is beyond redemption. This had been his last chance. God may forgive him, but I, for one, will not. Others may forget his betrayal, but I will not. John Cornyn must go, and I will not be satisfied until he no longer sits in high office defrauding the people of the Great State of Texas.

I am now actively seeking a prospective challenger or challengers to Mr. Cornyn, because the simple fact remains that we Texans cannot tolerate – we must not tolerate – this sort of duplicity from those who would claim to represent us. John Cornyn betrayed Texas and Texans on Friday, and then sought to cover that up with a wholly symbolic gesture. We Texans must remain people who will not prefer symbolism over substance, and we must not reward those who do. It’s time we bring John Cornyn home, so that he might re-learn what it is to be a Texan, but I fear that if we unseat him, he will remain in Washington DC in perpetuity, working for or establishing his own lobbying firm. More, I want him to live under Obama-care if the rest of us must. The fight is not over, and it’s moving to the House of Representatives, but John Cornyn has just made our fight so much harder. To Hell with John Cornyn. I will fight for Texas with real Texans!

It seems like a day doesn’t elapse without catching a glimpse of Karl Rove and his whiteboards on FoxNews. From the sounds of things, you might come to think he’s in charge of something at the GOP. Unfortunately, while he holds no official office, he’s always working on behalf of his patrons in the party, and he serves the interests of the surrender-monkey wing of the Republican party. Steve Schmidt, the architect of McCain’s loss in 2008, is another example of the sort of consultant with which DC Republicans seem to surround themselves. Schmidt is still bitter over his 2008 defeat, and he blames much of it on Sarah Palin. The truth is that she was the only good thing about the ticket, and exit-polling demonstrated quite clearly at the time that McCain would have done far worse without her on the ticket. It was Schmidt’s bright idea to have McCain suspend his campaign, and that was precisely the root of the collapse in McCain’s support. Looking to blame his own strategic failings on somebody – anybody – Schmidt is still on the Palin-hater bandwagon because to regain any credibility in his profession, he must shift blame to somebody else. These consultants are one of the biggest problems grass-roots conservatives face because they tend to turn candidates against their base, and wonder why they lose.

In an epic rant for Politico, McCain adviser and professional boot-licker Steve Schmidt claimed to feel “deep regret” for helping to fuel the creation of a “freak show” wing of the GOP. By “freak show” wing, he means you and I. He means real conservatives. He is referencing those who rose under the general label of “Tea Party.” Most of all, in singling out somebody that personifies what he termed “asininity,” he means Sarah Palin. Said Schmidt:

“For the last couple of years, we’ve had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party. Tossing out terms like RINO saying we’re going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party,” Schmidt said. “We’ve lost five U.S. Senate seats over the last two election cycles. And fundamentally we need Republicans, whether they’re running for president, whether they’re in the leadership of the Congress, to stand up against a lot of this asininity.”

“You finally you saw it with Ted Cruz. Maybe he was the one that who’s got a bridge too far,” Schmidt said. “Maybe we’ll start seeing our elected leaders stop being intimidated by this nonsense, have the nerve, have the guts to stand up and … to fight to take conservatism’s good name back from the freak show that’s been running wild for four years and that I have deep regret in my part, certainly, in initiating.”

Psssst. Hey Steve! We should purge you from the party, since there seems to be no other way to have you shut up and go away. Massive failure doesn’t seem to convince you. Frankly, the reason Republicans lose elections is because they listen to jerks like Schmidt who view actual conservatives as the problem. You see, Schmidt doesn’t recognize actual conservatism, but instead views “conservatism” as a label to be shifted onto his clients who in no way match the meaning of the term. If one wishes to see this at work, consider only the Bush campaigns of 2000 and 2004. Here, you had Rove positioning Bush as a “compassionate conservative,” when it was evident(or should have been) that Bush wasn’t conservative, and that he would wreck actual conservatism by the false association. In 2006, when Republicans lost the Congress, it was on the basis of this bastardized notion of conservatism. The Republicans lost control of Congress because under Bush, they were spending just like big-spending Democrats. It had been consultants like Schmidt and Rove who led the GOP to that and subsequent defeats.

If you want to know what constitutes a real freak-show in the Republican party, it is the unparalleled spectacle of hucksters in the consultancy class attempting to pass off moderates as conservatives. It is the inglorious pinnacle of asininity to pretend now that John McCain is conservative, and even more galling to pretend that his policy positions represent conservative principles, and yet con-men like Schmidt labor endlessly to carry out that fraud. When McCain was up for re-election in 2010, you may remember that the McCain camp had no problem soliciting the help of Sarah Palin, but now they betray her with this nonsense about “freak show” and alleged “asininity.” McCain might have been beat in the 2010 primaries without her, but does that fact earn even the smallest bit of respect from a hateful little troll like Schmidt? No. You see, in his book, it’s all about him. Admitting that Sarah Palin did more to boost either McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, or his 2010 Senatorial re-election campaign would be to admit that Schmidt is entirely useless, never mind the candidate in question.

The fact of the matter is that Schmidt and those in the consultancy class like Rove, who infamously once claimed that Palin’s endorsement wasn’t “worth snot” don’t have any credibility. For all their alleged gifts and talents as political analysts, advisers, and consultants, they don’t seem to have produced results to scale of their fame. Bush barely managed to prevail over Al Gore in 2000, relying on the electoral college, and in 2004, what should have been a walk-over victory was uncomfortably close against John Kerry, a man who should never be let near the oval office. Worse, under the guidance of Rove, in 2006, Republicans lost the Congress, permitting Barack Obama to have both Houses in 2009. We wouldn’t even be talking about Obama-care had the Republicans not joined Democrats in spending like drunks in support of the George W. Bush spending priorities, which had been massive.

It was the participation of Republicans like McCain in the Amnesty kerfuffle of 2007 that helped keep the Republicans in the wilderness too, another great idea from the consultancy wing of the party. How did that work out for us? Democrats kept control of Congress, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid made sure we’d have Obama-care so we could learn what was in it. We’re learning, and the real lesson we conservatives must take is that these professional beltway consultants and advisers are leading us off a cliff.

There’s no way around it. If we listen to the likes of Schmidt or Rove, we’re taking advice from people who don’t have our interests at heart. They’re profiteers on the political process, and they ply their trade by linguistic manipulations. It’s no surprising that they work hardest to protect their own images, and will stab anybody in the back in order to preserve their own reputations. In the end, they’re only accountable inasmuch as their political patrons are held accountable. They aren’t elected, and they never pay the price for shafting the American people. They are insulated from our direct anger as voters, and they always seem to move on to new patrons if their existing ones fall out of favor with voters. As long as they’re setting the direction of the Republican party, one shouldn’t expect that the GOP will be friendly to actual conservatives. They don’t care about our principles, as they pursue profit and power at our expense. If the last decade has taught us anything, it should be that it is we who are forced to pay for their failures. Noticing that fact will brand you as part of a “freak show.”

The progressives never declared a counter-revolution. Instead, they merely attacked and conspired to undermine our nation until all that now remains of constitutional republicanism is a facade made up of our constitution and our alleged devotion to it. For the twenty-five percent of the population that knows what has been done, it is difficult to convey to the roughly fifty percent of their disengaged countrymen who do not see it and who may welcome some parts of the counter-revolutionaries’ progressive reforms, not understanding the relationship of specific measures to the cabal against the whole. If we intend to turn the tide against the counter-revolutionaries, we must explain their purpose and their true identity, but also ours. Many formerly-disengaged Americans have begun to realize the nation is leaning only now toward collapse finally under the weight of the statists’ agenda. Their quiet coup against our constitutional republic has been under way for more than one-hundred years, but to rescue our nation, we will be compelled to expose them along with their collaborators. While there may be differences among us, we must unite in commitment to the proposition that to restore our dying, fading republic, the blunt facts and deferred truths must finally be told.

The constitutional republic we inherited had fallen into disrepair. Too many years of bending to pragmatic surrenders of liberty had already taken their toll. Too many shoddy reinterpretations of the definitions of words on which it relies had been at first permitted and then accepted. Simple concepts all too common to our republic’s framers have been sullied, misrepresented, and discarded as antique, obsolete, or primitive. One might wonder how successive generations of Americans had allowed this to happen, but the answer is ever the same: We and our forbears who ought to have risen against it were often beguiled into acceptance or even into open support because of political calculations about the practical nature of the issues. For eighty years, we have accepted the lie that Roosevelt had saved the country, when we know he helped only to finally wreck it. For a century, we have accepted the premise of Wilson that America should make the world safe for democracy. For all of my life, we have permitted the statists to continue a lie of gargantuan proportions about the efficacy of the welfare state for fear of being labeled as compassion-less.

We must become truth-tellers about all of it. We must dare even to tell the truth about the parts of it in which we may have participated. We must tell this truth to the young, because they ought to know it from us. It starts with a single confession: There exists no cause that will not precipitate an effect; there are no causeless effects. This simple truth applies to everything we understand about our world, but most particularly in this context to every human endeavor. Money does not fall as pennies from Heaven, and there is no free lunch. For every thing some person consumes, somewhere, in some fashion, payment will be made. The plotters and the schemers of the statist counter-revolution know this, but it has been their desire to disguise it, and too often, we have permitted them to propagate outright lies about it, or to reduce it to an emotional artifice upon which facts have no bearing or relevance.

I am reminded of an old joke about a wife trying on new dress. Asking her husband plaintively, she already has an answer in mind when she queries: “Does this dress make me look fat?” It is assumed in our culture that the man must answer in a particular fashion to soothe the vanity of his wife irrespective of reality by answering in the negative, but if true, what an honest husband must answer is: “No. It’s not the dress that makes you look fat.” It is this second clause of the answer, the one that defines the real problem, that we have abandoned as a culture. It is this second form, telling the whole truth, that we have permitted ourselves for the sake of immediate comfort to abandon. While doing so may be a suitable approach to marital relations in the estimations of many, such a fraud will not permit a country to live and thrive. What we have adopted is the cultural form of the expected answer for which the wife in this old joke had been hoping to soothe her vanity. This then must be the form of our answer in full, but applied to our cultural and political context: “It’s not the dress that makes you look fat. It’s the fat that makes you look fat.”

That sort of brutal honesty is a thing most are not now willing to adopt for themselves, never mind to profess it publicly. This basic shading of the truth by redirecting the question of effect to unrelated causes is the heart of our collapse. The statists rely upon it in so many issues and policies that I doubt I could name them all. It’s not a lack of contraception that makes women pregnant. It’s not the lack of a job that makes a person unemployable. It’s not a lack of any particular material thing that makes a person poor. It’s not a lack of money that makes a bank robber. It’s not the widespread availability of axes that makes axe-murderers possible. It’s not a lack of social programs that makes persons income-insecure in their old age, disability, youth, or at any other point in their lives. All of these are artifices, and all are contrived to permit us to avoid the unpleasant necessity of relating cause to effect.

Whatever we do, if we are to have any hope of reversing our decline, we must be truthful about its cause. When the professional protesters of statists’ instigation arrive to demand this thing or that thing, all assumed to alleviate their current state of discomfort, we are right to reject their bankrupt appeals, but more, to state flatly our judgments of the proximal cause of their “plights.” We must also state these truths about ourselves. We will not capture any solid proportion of the youth if we hide from the facts behind platitudes or pragmatic politics. The young people in this country are being sacrificed, and we are permitting it. We are. We’re permitting is because we don’t believe they’re worth the effort, and because we are consumed with hanging onto so much as remains of our own ambitions, goals, and long-range prosperity.

Our founders risked everything to carry out a revolution against that era’s preeminent manifestation of the state. They did not hide behind platitudes. They did not construct flimsy artifices and swallow them whole. They dared to name the truth of the matters at hand, and they did so knowing they might not survive to bear their revolution’s fruits. What truths will we risk? When we bounce our grandchildren upon our knees, taking delight in their precious smiles, at what point will we consider them old enough to know the truth about the world we are bequeathing to them? When our children near adulthood, will we have armed them with the facts, or will we permit them to struggle against or for the wrong cause, having unlinked the true cause of the effects they must now suffer? It is our silence that will kill them. It is the collection of artifices we have accepted that will annihilate their futures. Dare to look them in the eyes and tell them all the excuses, and that it hadn’t been your fault. After all, you didn’t choose this. You didn’t consent to this.

That shame we feel at having let this befall them must be given a voice. Since there are none but us to find it, we must gather our courage to say it. The statists did not alone impose this upon us. They had collaborators. Until we are willing to name them by confession, our silence is purchased and we are the root of the problem. Even now the Republicans who had opposed Obama-care with varying levels of ferocity only now to accept its miserable implementation as grudging convicts accepting the lashes for a secret guilt. Our progeny may now become slaves to our guilt, because for the sake of what we hope to scrounge in a dimming future, we won’t tell them the truth lest they discover our complicity. This conversion to rampant statism could not happen without our participation, or at least our silent assent. The establishment Republicans in Washington and elsewhere are those who had known better but said nothing out of fear that upsetting their apple-cart would cost them, too. We are the people who had accepted this as “leadership,” and who took a few of their crumbs offered as bribes for our silence.

Time is running short for this fading republic, and if we are to make a true effort for restoring her, we must state our case, including the confessions of every deceit we’ve accepted. It is not as though we hadn’t known. When we accepted the income tax, we knew where that would lead. When we accepted debt as money, we could not have believed it would be a solid foundation. When we accepted the programs with their ever-increasing eligibility, we must have known what it would birth. When we decided that we could “have it all” without the corresponding effort required to truly have it, we knew we were short-cutting. Let us then embark if we will upon a single premise that we often mouth without commitment to its meaning: “Freedom isn’t free.” It is now time that we clean our messes and bear its costs. If vanity leads the wife to ask a question for which she wants only a dishonest answer, what character defect in the husband permits him to satisfy the request? This is the central question that lies at the heart of our national morass, and until we answer it truthfully, there can be no restoration. We cannot hope to stave off the counter-revolutionaries by soothing their egos, and in so doing, satisfying a few of our own indulgences. The time for truth is now.

Given the direction of our republic into complete cultural, economic, and political collapse, it may be that drastic circumstances must call for equally drastic measures. On Friday night, Hannity aired a one-hour special with a studio audience on Fox News Channel that featured Mark Levin and his latest book: The Liberty Amendments -Restoring the American Republic. Hannity put up Levin’s proposed constitutional amendments for review by the esteemed studio audience, but the first matter to be examined was Levin’s proposed method of amending the constitution: Rather than wait for Congress to repair itself, a hope based entirely in futile notions about the ability of the American people to somehow force the change, he instead argues that Article V of the constitution already provides the means by which to amend it without the approval or consent of Congress or any other branch of the federal government. He is proposing an amending convention, convened by two-thirds of the states, with any produced amendments requiring ratification by three-fourths of the states.

For those who are somewhat confused about all of this, I would refer you to Article V of the US Constitution that provides for the two legitimate procedures by which to amend the constitution:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”(emphasis added.)

Bluntly, two-thirds of the legislatures of the states can initiate this process. Three-fourths have the ability to ratify them, just as if the Congress had proposed them. The difficulty of this process alone makes it entirely unlikely that the process might become a so-called “runaway convention.” As Levin responded on this point when asked during the course of the Hannity show, the simple fact is that there is nothing revolutionary about this process except that we, the people, have never initiated it, and it could be initiated at any time. Perhaps it is time we start.

Some of the comments on my last article on this subject seemed to raise the same objections, and while I understand the reservations, the simple truth of the matter is that if the statists existed in sufficient numbers that they could hijack this process, they would have initiated it themselves some time ago. There are clear dangers, but I think what Levin has here accomplished is marvelous for one particular reason, as became clear in a question from Breitbart’s Joel Pollak during the course of the show: The eleven amendments Levin proposes do not confront any political issue in particular, apart from perhaps taxation. Instead, they are all structural and procedural issues with respect to the federal government. Rather than attack a particular issue where the federal government can be shown to be out of control, they each confront defects in the original document, or in one case, reverse a defect imposed by previous amendments.

In focusing so tightly on the constructs of our federal government, Levin avoids the pitfalls of specific divisive political issues, leaving them to be resolved by virtue of a political process amended and restored to the framers’ intentions. In this sense, the proposal is at once elegant and simple. It is elegant inasmuch as it addresses the central failings of our national political process and the aggregation of power in the federal bureaucracy, and it inserts new forms of protections against a runaway federal establishment that imposes law and regulation with no effective check by those it purports to serve. The reversals born of such a slate of amendments would be slow but intractable, as power would necessarily begin to shift from the central government to the states. His proposal is simple because it relies on a process that is already part of our constitutional system, and need not be invented, nor rely on the approval of the federal establishment that would naturally resist it.

One of the criticisms that was raised had been about the repeal of the seventeenth amendment. Terry Jeffrey of CNSNews.com asked if returning the selection of Senators to the states’ legislatures wouldn’t hurt the civil engagement of the populace. My answer would be somewhat different than Dr. Levin’s, because I would tend to consider it this way: Which elections need the most bolstering in terms of civic participation? National or state and local? I would suspect that if electing one’s state representatives and senators would be crucial in electing members of the US Senate, interest in state legislative elections would be certain to grow. I might also point out that in many respects, this might well serve conservatives most of all, since it is we who tend to show up reliably in off-year and state/local elections. The so-called “low information voter” does not. To the degree this would draw more to the process, it may also help reduce the total number of such uninformed voters by engaging them in their state governments, thereby lifting the veil of ignorance behind which they may now suffer.

Indeed, one could argue that the seventeenth amendment had been contrary to the framers’ intent, not merely because it repealed their process, but because of its net result in muting the states as voices in the federal government. It is fitting then that even in Article V, the point is demonstrated by its closing clause:

“…no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”(emphasis mine.)

It could be said hereby that the seventeenth amendment deprived all the States of any form of suffrage in the US Senate. After the seventeenth amendment, States effectively have no direct suffrage of any form, thus rendering them voiceless in the federal government that had been their creation.

Naturally, there were ten amendments more than the repeal of the seventeenth discussed, including an interesting proposal that would permit the overturn of federal regulations by the states. There were also term limits for Congress, and there were term limits for the federal judiciary. There was even a method by which the states could overturn Supreme Court decisions. What all of these proposed amendments share is a singular focus on the construction and process of the federal government. That is a brilliant approach to reform that would have the effect of more slowly and carefully reversing our course.

I’ve given a great deal of thought to Levin’s proposal, as I have proposed some of these same ideas in some form in the past. As Levin points out, the Congress and the Courts, never mind a runaway executive have no reason whatever to reform themselves. If they are to be reformed, we will need to be the instigators. This then ought to be our mission, the effort of our time. If we are to be blunt about our nation’s prospects on its current course, it must be admitted that the future looks bleak. None should think this is a project that will be done in a year or in an election cycle. The fact is that this process begins with local and state politics. It means getting our state legislatures in shape so that the delegates they would send must be of a mind to author the kinds of amendments that Levin proposes here.

I realize there are risks implicit in any move to convene delegates for the purpose of amending the constitution, but the simple fact is that the constitution has been amended in a de facto methodology by the results of extra-constitutional rulings of the court, outrageous legislative initiatives in Congress, and the tyrannical fiat of executive whimsy that threaten every right of the American people. We are already nearing the precipice from which there will be no return, where plummeting into the abyss will be merely a matter of inertia. If George Mason insisted on this second procedure as the last effective rampart against federal tyranny, then I say we must exercise it. The only alternative is almost too terrible to imagine, and violence will be the only feasible outcome. There are many who make bold oaths, explaining that they would be happy with that occasion, but I wonder how much of that is bravado. Perhaps it is easier for some to make idle pronouncements than to stand forth and make serious efforts aimed at avoiding that sort of catastrophe.

When I consider even the simple repeal of the seventeenth amendment, I realize Levin is right. Such an amendment could never pass a Senate now subservient only to the Washington DC establishment, so that to restore the voice of the states, it will require their insistence and instigation. If you missed this episode of Hannity, I hope FNC will make more of it available. Here is the opening clip:

When I think about Mark Levin’s forthcoming book entitled The Liberty Amendments (sure to be a bestseller,) I become a bit frustrated. Among conservatives, what I hear most often in thoughts expressed about the book is either that his proposal is simply too hard, or that it’s too dangerous a prospect to seek to amend the constitution through the convention process detailed in Article V of the constitution. What I perceive among conservatives is a collective sigh and shrug, in admission of slinking retreat from the battlefield. I understand that frustration, and I know too well why so many conservatives feel like surrendering, so thoroughly exhausted from fighting what seems a losing battle. On the other hand, I must ask my brethren if it’s wise to relent so easily. After all, if we’re serious about saving the country, it’s going to have a cost in dollars, sweat, and sadly, perhaps some blood. If you have any illusions about it, you’re not really in this fight. What conservatives should recognize is that Levin’s approach may be all that can avoid civil conflict, and that avoidance will lead to subjugation or civil war. Some may think it is impossible or even suicidal to amend the constitution by the convention process, but we mustn’t let fatigue, fear or sloth stop us.

Although the book has not yet been released, Levin has discussed the broad concepts involved on his daily radio talk-show. He’s even made the first chapter available for download on his website. Some callers seem enthusiastic, but there is another group of callers who seem somewhat confused, or even to be overwhelmed with misinformation with respect to “opening up the constitution” either to gross re-write or outright replacement. While amendments that are broad are certainly possible, what must be understood is that under Article V, any such amendments would need to be ratified by thirty-eight of fifty states before being adopted as part of our constitution. With that sort of broad-based approval being required, it’s hard to imagine something tyrannical or fundamentally anti-American gaining traction. Impossible? Strictly, no, but with millions upon millions of watchful Americans, it’s hard to conceive of the process being hijacked in such a manner. While it is easy to understand such fears, it’s not very likely that due cause for them would materialize.

Instead, most fears I’ve heard expressed on the subject are born of a general fatigue and frustration, inasmuch as most Americans so-concerned do not believe anything fruitful would be obtained from such a process, or that such a process would ever be permitted to come to pass by the political powers running Washington DC. My fellow conservatives point to the basic sloth and lack of political study or engagement of most of their fellow citizens as evidence for the cause of a presumed failure-to-launch for such a movement. It’s hard to disagree with this pessimistic view of the efficacy of any such effort given the obvious problem we have in this country when one considers even voting turn-out in national elections: Most people don’t want to be troubled with politics, and will simply obey whatever laws are passed by whichever politicians manage to pass them, irrespective of their effects.

One of the reasons for doubt among so many conservatives is an intense understanding of how hard it has become to penetrate the veil of pop-culture distractions behind which most Americans live their daily lives. It has been a lament of my own for years past counting that too many Americans are more concerned about trivial, inconsequential matters like television shows or sporting events. Many Americans reorganize their lives around such things, but despite having the intellectual capacity to comprehend all the statistics of sports, or to track the endless permutations of reality television, most Americans simply can’t be bothered with the work of self-government. How often do I read such laments in the comments on this site?

The trouble then may be us. We are obviously too interested in the direction of our country, if judged by the standards of so many of our countrymen. What we must ask is if there is any way to capture and hold their attention for such a monumental task. Such an undertaking would not be likely accomplished in a span less than a decade, because we would first be required to put in place state legislators in sufficient numbers who would carry this forward. The simple truth is that for any of this to happen, we must put it into action. We, who have continued to struggle as the country’s economic beasts of burden, dragging the nation along despite more outrageous loads being heaped upon us must finally decide whether we will be crushed under this cargo or instead unload it by a conscious effort to do away with it.

I no longer argue with leftists. I find that they are as intransigent in their opinions as any brick wall, but what I have discovered is that there exists a vast swath of America’s population that simply doesn’t care. For now. As the country begins to devolve and ultimately dissolve, the statists will become increasingly desperate to hold it together, and this will lead them to inflict more and more outrageous measures. As they do, the American people will begin to wake up, and we will need to be there, ready to welcome them into the fold. Nothing drives political involvement like self-interest. Why do the Democrats concoct phony wars on women, wars on minorities, and wars on the environment? It is all aimed at capturing votes through a perceived self-interest. Knowing this, we must be prepared to gather such of our people as we can in order to gather steam as the opportunity presents.

As Levin has explained, there is no need to fear the Article V amendment convention he proposes. George Mason insisted upon it as the last peaceful recourse against a despotic Congress. When the two parties now openly collude, Mason’s gift to us may yet be the salvation of our nation if we have the requisite diligence to pursue it. It would be simple to walk away and await our doom, accepting what may come with grim resolve, but I must ask my fellow conservatives if that is the fate we will accept. If it is true as seems to be the case that the Republicans now collude in the growing despotism of an ever-larger, entrenched surveillance and welfare state, commanding and controlling our lives, Levin’s approach may be our sole remaining peaceful opportunity. I don’t know if the sloth born of complacency will stop us from saving the country, but it shouldn’t stop conservatives from trying. It may be all that remains in the kit. We can take the country back, and the wisdom of our founders provided us one last method. I’d urge readers to consider Levin’s book with the diligence it deserves, equal at least to his supreme diligence in writing it.

It should come as no surprise to conservatives that we’re being shafted on virtually every issue by some gang-of-eight or other assembly of Republicans who simply will not stand up to the Democrats. Normally, I don’t spend much time guessing at their motives, instead tending to examine the results of their positions. I don’t necessarily assume that our GOP establishment opponents are evil, but merely misguided. This view has been changing, because the more closely I examine their positions, the more baffled I become by any logical standard of measurement. The problem is that discovering their motive has become increasingly important to the prospect of defeating them. If we understood what it is that they’re after, we might find it somewhat easier to beat them or make them irrelevant. Sadly, I have begun to conclude that my worst fears may be true. The GOP’s establishment wing clearly runs the show, leading us to perpetual defeat. It is time to ask ourselves why by considering the issues on which they’ve abandoned conservatism.

My first question must go to folks like Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan(R-WI) on the issue of immigration reform: “Are you stupid?” I know this will seem a bit blunt to some people, but it’s a sincere question. The Senate Gang-of-Tr8ors bill offers to create between twelve and thirty million new citizens over the coming decade. We already know that the overwhelming majority of them will be Latinos of Mexican origin, and that their tendency is to vote for the Democrats by a seven-to-two ratio or worse, once they become eligible. What sort of complete and utter moron must one be to believe this could in any way redound to the benefit of the Republican party, conservatism, or even our nation’s future? Given the stance of Ryan and his cohorts, we are left to conclude that there can be only two things driving their position. Either they are among the most pathetically irrational and moronic persons, or they must know what will happen and wish to gain that result. There are no alternatives.

On the issue of the budget, the establishment Republicans insist that we must support Paul Ryan’s pathetic, tinkering attempt at reform, even though it establishes no concrete foundation of reform, instead promising to reduce the rate of growth of the deficit, but not arresting it entirely, never mind addressing the mounting debt. More, when you call members of the House or Senate to demand an explanation as to how the official National Debt count has been stuck for two months running, despite the fact that the government is taking on more debt, none of the Republican members seem all too interested in finding an explanation. Once again, we are confronted with the question: Are these people simply oblivious? Why aren’t they screaming at the top of their lungs? Here you have an administration that is exceeding the statutory debt limit by billions of dollars, and in order to disguise it, they’ve stopped the debt clock. Other than the frozen clock, they’ve continued business as usual. What good is a sequestration of funds? What good is a debt limit fight if the guys who must engage have already surrendered? Do you believe for one moment that Paul Ryan or the rest of the RINO phalanx in Washington DC is unaware? Do you believe they are so incompetent as to miss the significance of these Treasury Department actions? It is either true that they are so incompetent that we must for the good of the nation replace them, or they are willing to let Obama do what he’s doing, in which case we must be rid of them for the same reason.

I have said many times that it doesn’t really matter whether they’re simply foolish or guilty of collusion, but I’ve come to change my view on this. One can’t forgive negligence born of incompetence, but one must punish willful misdeeds more harshly as a warning to other would-be scoff-laws. It’s a matter of intent. Are the establishment Republicans in Washington DC, under the “leadership” of John Boehner(R-OH,) Mitch McConnell(R-OH,) and all the other big-government Republicans simply guilty of foolishness and incompetence, or is their behavior evidence of malice? This is the ugly question we must ask ourselves, because we may choose one or the other alternative postulate, but never both.

It’s now clear to me that the Republican party as expressed by its “leaders” in Washington DC is in open collusion with the Democrats and President Obama. There is no other way to explain their willingness to go along, knowing what the results will be. On Benghazi, they help the Democrats obfuscate, and on the IRS scandal, they gum up the works, but on legislative matters of significance, they are lending an assist to Democrats: On immigration, the budget and debt ceiling, the funding of Obama-care, and a range of somewhat less significant issues at the moment, they are not merely capitulating, but assisting the Democrats. They must be either the largest collection of stupid people in any government on the planet, or they intend the results their efforts are obtaining. It cannot be both.

A conservative must now ask with pointed clarity: Does it matter if John Boehner or some lunatic Democrat wins his seat in 2014? Does it matter in the least if Lamar Alexander or some Tennessee Democrat wins that Senate seat in 2014? The answer is yes: The prospective Democrat in either case is at least being honest about his or her intentions, in the main, at least to the degree that by running as Democrats, we voters may make an accurate guess about what sort of legislation will result. This cannot be said of the RINOs in the GOP. By running as Republicans, there has been at least the implicit idea that such candidates will oppose statism, but that simply hasn’t been the case. If ever there had been a time in American history when the willingness of voters to be true to themselves was the most critical aspect of their political activism and engagement, now must be that time. We must admit in the open what we have long suspected: The establishment wing of the GOP consists of traitors to every value and ideal we hold sacred, because they are in open collusion with those who are actively seeking the destruction of our country.

Some of you will be familiar with this speaker, Adrienne Ross, who writes at MotivationTruth, as well as a contributing to C4P, and this speech to Cape County(MO) Republican Women’s Club, is a great candid approach to expanding the appeal of conservatism to a wider audience. She makes plain here the importance of expanding the reach of the conservative message, and in so doing, debunks a body of lies that is accepted in the media culture and political establishment as fact. One of the things that has confounded many conservatives is how they can extend their message into a community that so often shares social ideas with conservatism, but who have become estranged by sixty years of identity politics. Is there a way to bridge the gap? Ross has her own ideas on the subject. Here’s the video:

Mark Levin introduced his audience to the conceptual aim of his forthcoming book on Wednesday evening. Titled The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, the book is set to be released on August 13th, although it can be pre-ordered on Amazon now. His basic premise is this: In all the history of the United States, governed under the constitution arising from the convention begun in 1787, and completed in 1791, there have been twenty-seven amendments successfully ratified, all arising through the Article V. process that permits two-thirds of both the House and Senate to propose an amendment, leaving it to three-fourths of the states to ratify and enact it. Dr. Levin rightly points out that the second course offered by Article V has never been exercised, and it is this recourse by which we must seek our national restoration. The second alternative is to seek a convention to amend the constitution, without interference or obstruction by the Federal Congress. In suggesting this alternative, Levin explains why this process was created, and how we might now use it to bring the Federal government to heel. It’s admittedly a long shot, but it may be the only course now remaining.

For those not familiar with Article V, here is the entire text, with the relevant clauses emphasized:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”-US CONST ART V

Many fear that such an amending convention would result in a chaotic process that would effectively rewrite and thereby overthrow the existing constitution, but as Levin explained Wednesday, there need be no such effect because any amendments proposed would still require the approval of three-fourths of states(thirty-eight of fifty,) in order to be ratified. In his coming book, he is introducing eleven “Liberty Amendments” as a means to put in place much-need restraints on our increasingly out-of-control government.

I sincerely hope that among them, he will call for the repeal of the seventeenth amendment, a blight on our system of checks and balances from which this country now suffers mightily. Over the course of this blog, I have introduced other ideas for amendments, and as a matter of curiosity, but also as a matter of interest as an activist in pursuit of liberty. We desperately need to think about this, and to bring this to the attention of our fellow Americans, who may not understand it, may not recognize its value, and may not otherwise be exposed to the reasoning for taking this approach.

Levin’s explanation is simple in broad terms: The Federal government has grown to an extent that it can no longer be relied upon as the instrument by which it will be disciplined. Even if the task seems impossible, both as an educational and preparatory exercise, it is important to pursue this course. As Levin explained it, if the Federal government’s current course causes the catastrophic results we can reasonably expect, it would be best if the American people already had freshly in mind the manner by which to force reform down the Federal government’s throat without resorting to violence and upheaval.

We conservatives know where our government’s current path will lead, and we’re also informed as to the unambiguous intransigence of the current Federal leviathan. We cannot rely on Washington DC, or any of the branches of our Federal government to restrain or discipline themselves in any way. Even in such a states-based effort, the Federal establishment in Washington would do everything it is able to impede, obstruct, and ultimately blunt the effects of any such effort. As Levin further contended, if the Federal government, specifically the Congress, endeavored to break with the rules of the process as outlined in Article V, this would indeed act as a probably trigger for the last resort to which a free people may turn in the face of tyranny. After all, if the Federal government itself became so lawless that it would ignore specific constitutional processes, that government is itself in anarchy and may no longer lay legitimate claim to the authority to govern.

Government needs a good spanking, and we cannot rely on this pack of spoiled children and their enablers to deliver it. We will need to rise up, to educate, and to use the processes already available under the constitution to impose our will on the government, whether it can be accomplished by efforts in time of peace and relative prosperity, or will be delayed until exigency demands it, and dramatic reform may no longer be denied. As has been oft-quoted by government officials, particularly in the judiciary, the US Constitution is not a “suicide pact,” but this works in both directions. It is not a suicide pact most of all for we the people, and it is time we reassert it supremacy as the foundation of our law, and the basis for our nation’s long-enjoyed prosperity and liberty.

This makes all the more important the efforts of grass-roots groups, such as the Tea Party and any sort of “Freedom Faction” that might arise to challenge the existing establishment, because this approach will require the broadest demands of the people working in every state in the union. None should be deluded into thinking such an undertaking will occur in one election cycle, or any number of them, without a persistent and unrelenting dedication of purpose. Once again, let history record that we had been the people equal to the task of self-governance. Let it be said of us that we gave it our fullest measure of devotion, for the country and the constitution we still love and revere, that our children and grandchildren might yet inherit its fullest blessings.

Note: Site modifications and updates are still being brought online in phases. Some of the largest chores are yet to be done, and I intend to carry them out Friday night or in one case, Saturday night. Visitors in the wee hours of the morning are likely to experience sporadic outages. Thank you for your continued patience.

There has been a great deal of discussion over the last week concerning the remarks made by Governor Palin in answer to a question from Josh Painter, regarding the possibility of a new party to supplant the GOP. As Steve Deace covers in his own cost/benefit analysis of the idea, there are a few practical considerations to leaving the Republican Party that make for a gargantuan series of problems, including effectively surrendering the whole governance of the country to the Democrats in the short run. As Deace also explains quite effectively, if we don’t change the direction of the country, it won’t matter much because with the current supine and tepid leadership of the GOP, we have arrived already in that effective condition. What opposition to the Obama agenda do conservatives see from the GOP? There has been little evident among establishment Republicans, often behaving more like collaborators than opponents. This conflict has been a long time in coming, but I believe we must face it squarely or surrender to statism. If we are going to conquer our political foes, we must clean up our own house, refusing to abandon it to the slumlords of the GOP establishment. For once, let us do the unexpected, turning tables on them: We must build a party within the Party as the means by which to take it over, but this time, for keeps.

Ever since the days of the progressive era, there has been a class of Republicans the members of which don’t hold republican ideals. Their manner of coming to dominate the GOP was a form of stealthy infiltration and guile. They looked like conservatives, and they used many of the appropriate conservative buzzwords in speeches and articles, so that it was somewhat harder to recognize them. They gained influence by building their own parallel mechanisms within the Republican Party, all aimed at supplanting conservative ideology and philosophy with their own. Cronies were inserted all up and down the Republican totem pole, giving them vast power with which to override any conservative sentiments. Time after time, they managed to keep conservatives out, and the few times they failed, they almost always managed to sabotage them somehow. When Barry Goldwater(R-AZ) sought the Republican nomination in 1964, they submarined him, the Rockefeller Republicans withdrawing virtually all support, barely managing to pretend they would support Barry Goldwater.

In 1980, the same crowd finally lost another round of the RNC nomination fight, having nearly lost it four years earlier. Ronald Reagan wasn’t getting much establishment support early on, even immediately after the nominating convention, but when they saw that the train was going to leave the station without them, they hurried to climb aboard, pointing to moderate VP choice George HW Bush as the thing that made Reagan “tolerable.” The truth is, they saw Reagan as a plausible vehicle to install their own people at the highest levels of government, for later use, but also as a way to confound and steer the Reagan administration. America would have its first conservative president in generations, but the establishment Republicans were going to use every bit of influence they could to turn it to their advantage. They did this as they always do, establishing their own chain of cooperation and control within the Reagan administration. The amnesty bill of 1986 was probably the greatest evidence of their scheming, a bill that contributed to the loss of Republican control of the Senate that year by depressing conservative turnout, much as what happened in 2006 when Republicans lost the Congress after that year’s amnesty attempt.

We conservatives should take a few lessons from this, and I believe if we’re attentive to the details, it will be easier to understand what must be done and how we must do it. Others have written extensively about how to carry out a virtual overthrow inside the Republican Party, so I won’t expend too much of your time on that. Instead, I wish to talk about the character of what you must do. What we need is a party within the party. Rather than trying to become our own free-standing party, a solution we already know will take many years and even decades to complete, let us create a subset of the Republican Party and we can call it the “Freedom Faction.” Freedom of association being what it is, I’m sure the Republican Party won’t mind if some of its members are simultaneously members of another group over which they have no control. Well, perhaps they will not mind too much, but if they do, to devil with them. They’re who we mean to defeat firstly.

This is what the Tea Parties has been, with the singular distinction that they were not officially a subset of the Republican Party, and did not seek to be. This has permitted them independence of action and advocacy, which is a critical thing common-sense conservatives need, but it is also a detriment inasmuch as it is more difficult for them to guide the direction of the GOP. In fact, most of us who are most desperately frustrated with the direction of the Republican Party are precisely the Tea Party folk, meaning many can merely adopt the “Freedom Faction” and move in. My point is that despite all that has been said about the Tea Party, many of them soldier on in spite of the way they’ve been treated by Democrats and Republicans alike. The left likes to say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” so since they consider Tea Partiers “terrorists,” let us instead be freedom-fighters. That’s what we really are, and that’s what our movement must embrace. We’re small “r” republicans who constitute the Freedom Faction of the Republican Party. It was always our party, despite the RINOs and the establishment hacks, and it can still be our party if we simply act to take it back, but to do so, we’ll need to build a party within the party so that as insurgents, we can place our own in the places of influence.

The Republican Party is willing to except Democrats in open primary states to help them select establishment nominees, and since they haven’t demonstrated the will to stop that, I doubt they’ll muster the sentiment to stop us, although we do pose the larger threat. What do my small “r” republican readers think? Is it time to build our Freedom Faction and use it as a platform from which to recapture our party? It will take discipline, teamwork, and a broad coordination, all things of which we are capable, but which are are somewhat alien to our general dispositions. We are demonstrably an independent lot. The establishment will know something is afoot, and they will try to thwart us, but we have an advantage demonstrated by Romney’s miserable election day ground-game: We’re more agile and fluid, while they are grinding cogs in a hopelessly malfunctioning machine. They won’t want us. They don’t have a choice. Will they show their true colors and banish us from the party? Not likely. Will they try to control, infiltrate and sabotage us? Absolutely. Will they send Karl “Tokyo” Rove to attack us? I can’t wait.

If a party is free to makes its own rules, it seems to me that a party within a party should be able to do the same. The establishment Republicans never seemed to have a problem setting up rules and procedures to their liking, or rigging conventions four years in advance. Of course, I’ve never built a party before, though I may have a few useful ideas. Nevertheless, to bring this to fruition will take more than one anonymous curmudgeon on a blog site. If you’re interested, let me know at freedom-faction@markamerica.com. I’d love to read your ideas! Some of you have decades of experience in local political activism, so that your wisdom will be needed by younger activists who wish to establish a Freedom Faction. If we hope to take control of the Republican Party, while avoiding the daunting problems of simply abandoning it for a new party, I think building an explicit faction within the party is a great idea. After all, that’s what the establishment, RINO Republicans have been doing to us for ages. Is it not time to turn tables?

The DC insiders say the Tea Party is dead, but I don’t believe that. I think they’re about to run into a “Tea Party” the likes of which they’ve never imagined, and it may just be out to clean up Washington DC with a vengeance.

I’m a conservative, and I’m also a “republican,” but I am the latter only in the sense of a lower-case “r.” I believe in the republican form of government promised in Article IV, section 4, of the US Constitution. Many Republicans (members of the political party) seem to be confused about what this means, and I suppose it is only fair to make them aware of the distinctions between the things many current Republicans now advocate that violate the platform and the principles of republicanism that their party claims to uphold. Those who become confused about what it means to be a RINO (“Republican In Name Only”) need only consider the small “r” form of the word. It’s easy to fill out a voter registration card and check the box beside the word “Republican,” but it’s another matter entirely to know what is republicanism. As we debate issues of critical import to the future of the nation, it’s more important than ever that conservatives know what it is they are fighting, and what form it takes. The outcome of 2014 and 2016 will set the course of the nation for generations, and we must win it. This is the heart of the battle between the so-called RINOs and we constitutional conservatives, and it will determine our nation’s future.

One of the concepts that has long been associated with republicanism is that we hold in disdain the notion of a “ruling class,” a presumptively superior elite who by virtue of some unknown mechanism somehow know better than the rest of us with respect to how we ought to be governed. Indeed, when our republic was established, it was with the experience of a people who had freed themselves from the bonds of a King, who claimed his right to rule over us by virtue of his station of birth. I do not doubt that some people are superior to others in some particular way, but nearly everybody can claim some attribute in which they are superior to most others. Some of that is a result of education, experience and training, while some of it results from pure genetic gifts. There is no gene, however, that entitles one man to rule over others. There exists no family lineage in America that can rightly claim to exercise a disproportionate power over the affairs of nations and men. We do not have kings, and while there were a few in early America who advocated for a monarchy, the broad body of the American people rejected the idea as an apostasy aimed at thwarting the very revolution in which they had only so recently succeeded.

The only thing I hold in greater contempt than the man (or woman) who would claim the right to rule over me by virtue of family lineage or family station(a.k.a. “nobility”) is the poor, twisted soul who would consent to such a proposition. I am no person’s chattel, and I abhor any human being who claims membership in this species who would surrender themselves as having been of no greater significance than a possession of “better” men. Those lacking the essential self-esteem to realize that they are by right the sovereigns over their own affairs, equal to any other on the planet, ought to immediately depart these shores to seek refuge in some Kingdom as a serf. In this sense, it is fair to say that I not only reject a supposed “ruling class,” but also that I likewise hold in contempt the corollary premise of a “ruled class.” Part of the republican ideal is that classes are a subjectively-defined fraud perpetrated against a people who ought not to be willing to accept it. Why is it that so many Republicans prefer to think of Americans in a class system little different from their alleged ideological opponents, the statists? The answer is that too many Republicans are statists themselves, having rejected the fundamentals of republicanism.

By what strange and mystical knowledge do the brothers Bush claim to have the better answer on the subject of immigration, both now pushing the Gang-ofTr8ors Bill? Why do so many Republicans accept their claim in the unthinking form of a command received from on high? It is because too many Republicans have either surrendered or rejected the republican principles under whose banner they march. If you listen closely enough, you can hear in their intentionally vague language the lost concepts that they will not name, never having believed in them from the outset. Although a few are now catching themselves in pursuit of the betterment of their propagandists’ art, you will invariably hear them speak of democracy as the goal and the object of their advocacy. This is not merely loose wording, but a true reflection of the form of government they seek, a form so terrible that our founders placed a stricture against it in the US constitution in the form of an endorsement of republican government.

A democracy is not a form of government most rational people would want, except that they have been taught that it is the desired form. To hear a President say that he wishes to spread democracy to the Middle East is an arrow through the heart of republicanism. We have seen what democracy creates in the Middle East and throughout the Arab-speaking world. Pakistan is a democracy. Egypt is now a democracy. Libya is now a putative democracy. Iraq now is a sort of hybrid democracy, but in each of them, what you will observe is how the whole course of the nation is changed by political instabilities, and that the rule of law acts as no restraint upon political leaders in working their will. Barack Obama is intent on turning the US into a democracy, because democracy is always the precursor to despotism. Most of the worst thugs of the twentieth century came to power on a wave of popular support that defines the democratic model: He(or she) with the biggest mob wins. Even now, in Cairo, when the military perceived that President Morsi (the Muslim Brotherhood’s stooge,) no longer held sway over the largest mob, they placed him under house arrest and offered an interim president who will enjoy for at least a time some popular support. Throughout the third world, it is fair to say that most countries have adopted some form of governance that lurches repeatedly and often from some sort of feigned democracy to absolute despotism.

A republican form of government is much more stable, and it has been the underlying root of our general prosperity for some two-hundred-twenty years, with a few notable exceptions, in largest measure because nearly all of the occupants of the land had accepted the orderly rule of law and the specific, constitutional methodology by which laws are to be adopted, modified, or repealed. Having a set of rules that is inflexible, particularly with respect to changing those rules, and obtaining the consent of those who must live under them for a span of two centuries is an extraordinary feat in human history. The dire flaw in all of this is that from the moment of its adoption, people begin to conspire to overthrow it in one fashion or another, by finding loopholes, imagining a “flexibility” that does not exist, inciting rebellion against it, or seizing power over it with which to subsequently ignore the mandates of the law.

In American history, we have seen all of these methods employed, indeed, some of them are being employed even now, as our President conspires with his cabinet to ignore the rule of law, ignoring the plain language of the law as often and as thoroughly as they believe they can manage in a particular political context. What good is a law that those who are charged with enforcing it refuse to rise to carry it into execution? When the public officials whose job it is to see to it that subordinate officials execute the law refuse to discipline those who will not obey, always claiming as an excuse some alleged greater “public good,” what you are witnessing is the reduction of a republic to the state of a pre-despotic democracy.

Many Americans who are demonstrably ignorant of the world’s history of governance believe that our Electoral College is anti-democratic, and on this basis, advocate its repeal, demanding instead to rely upon a majority (or plurality) of the popular vote. While they are correct that the Electoral College is undemocratic, their ignorance is born of an educational system that has misled them to expect majoritarian rule in all cases as the preferred model. Naturally, that same system has failed to teach them about federalism, the ninth and tenth amendments, and the whole construct that is a constitutional, representative republic, being the precise form of government the framers of the US constitution did adopt and ratify .

Informing them of this distinction, many are still suspicious of it, because it sounds strange and foreign to them, most under the age of forty having never been taught a syllable about it in the government schools. Even in the school from which I graduated a long, long time ago, the senior-year civics class was entitled “Problems of Democracy.” Had I been a more thoroughly-engaged student, I might have questioned it then, but like virtually all of my peers, I did as I was told, never considering a word of it. It would take years of study to unlock the knowledge of which I had been cheated, and at first, I resisted it. How could all of this be true? How could America not be a “democracy?” How could democracy be a bad thing? This is where many Americans get hopelessly stuck, because we’ve adopted the flexible language of lunatics, where we interchange words with the imprecise vulgarity of schoolyard bullies. “The difference between a democracy and a republic won’t matter to you so much after I beat your face.”

The truth about democracy is what has always been its fatal flaw, perhaps best described by a phrase often mistakenly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but possessed of perfectly sanguine execution, irrespective of its source:

“Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what will be for lunch.”

Indeed, in a true democracy, there can be no protections of any minority but by violence. This was the great object the framers of our constitution had hoped to impede. They knew that majoritarian rule is no form of government for a peaceable, civil society, and that such governments are always ripe for manipulation by unscrupulous and demagogic usurpers. The whole purpose of all their checks and balances had been to obstruct to the degree humanly possible the sort of instability made easier by democratic rule. Their constitution set at odds every branch of government, and even divisions within branches, like the House and Senate. It relied upon a competing fight for sovereign power between the several states and the federal government, all at odds in most cases, except when the most pressing of public crises may discipline them to more affable cooperation. This was their plan, and their intention, and they hoped that in little-modified form, it could survive some severe tests that they knew would come, as they must for all nations.

With the onset of the progressive era in the early twentieth century, there was a move toward greater “democratization,” that brought with it a string of constitutional amendments, causing a great unwinding of our nation. The 16th, creating an authority to tax income (and the legal establishment of a class system;) the 17th, changing the manner of election of US Senators; the 18th, instituting prohibition; the 19th finally giving women the right to full political participation all came in this era, with only one of them(the 19th) having been justifiable among civilized people, and one of them(the 18th) creating such terror that it was ultimately repealed by the 21st amendment. Progressive Republicans of that era helped to install these amendments, and none of them did more damage to the system of checks and balances the framers had invented than the 17th amendment. It effectively muted the voices of the states as sovereigns in the federal system. It did so by causing Senators to be popularly elected in their respective states, shutting out the state governments as a confounding, obstructive influence on the growth of centralized government.

Our republican form of government was constructed to sub-divide government into so many competing segments and interests that it would be nearly impossible for any one interest to gain supremacy. It succeeded in many ways so long as politicians held onto the general republican ideals, for more than a century generally held by members of both parties. (It is instructive to remember that the forebears of the modern Democrat Party called themselves “Democratic Republicans” for many years before dropping the second half of their name with the ascendancy of Andrew Jackson.) It is therefore no surprise that a Democrat party would become the party of the slave-holding South, or that the Republicans would supplant the Whigs by championing the rights of an enslaved minority. Words, including even party labels, meant something distinct in those days.

In the progressive era, mostly for the sake of political expediency, there were a number of Republicans who began to adopt more democratic notions of governance, including the predisposition of their Democrat brethren to an elitist view of a class system not only in the general populace, but also among political offices and those who occupied them. The influences of corporations grew, as did the corrupting influence of gangsters during prohibition. From that era arose an establishment of Republicans who were nothing of the sort, and with few exceptions, have managed to maintain a fairly strong control over that party, most often as the minority party. Viewed in this fashion, it could be said rightly that the Republican Party has been charged with managing the real republicans into submission.

Who are the real advocates of republicanism in the Republican Party? Nowadays, we call them “conservatives,” although they are actually the philosophical heirs to the classical liberals of the late eighteenth century, by and large. “Conservative” is approximately opposite of “liberal” or “progressive” in popular connotation, and since the Democrats had successfully co-opted the term “liberal,” despite being nothing of the sort, they managed to carry off a vast fraud on the American people using a sort of primitive branding that set conservatives against the liberal Democrats and the progressive Republicans. It has been in this approximate form ever since, with the Republicans adopting “moderate” from time to time as a way to escape linkage with the frightful failures of the progressive era.

Now come we full circle to the moment that is both the beginning and the end. The Bush clan seems to have some special public sense of duty to rule over the country, as evinced by the fact that despite having had two members of their clan accumulate two solid decades of first influence and then dominance over the Republican Party, they are far from finished. Their ideas are as progressive as any Democrat you will ever meet, the singular difference being that they seem to temper the left’s radical secularism with public professions of faith in the Almighty. Put in plainer language, they are approximately ecumenical communists, and their particular subset of the broad statist philosophy is known as communitarianism. Whatever did you think is “compassionate conservatism?”

They don’t believe in the supremacy of the individual over the interests of the community. Most conservatives are almost precisely opposite in philosophical leanings to the communitarian front, being Christian individualists in the main. While they certainly work in their communities and contribute to them greatly, they believe in an individualized form of salvation, and an individual responsibility in obtaining it. The communitarians conceive instead a form of “collective salvation.” If that term sounds vaguely familiar to you, it is because your current president has used it too. In this sense, it is fair to say that from Bush the elder, to Barack Obama, we have been on a nonstop course of communitarianism since 1989. They do not believe in the small “r” republicanism of our founders, and they certainly do not believe in the containment of the state, the only discernible difference being their apparent relative positions on the scale between religious and secular intent.

To demolish the United States will require demolishing its distinct culture, any sort of nationalistic sentiment among its people, and the broadening of the definitions of citizenship and nationhood. Did you think the Senate’s amnesty bill was just about cheap labor? It is about deconstructing the United States as a sovereign entity responsive to the interests of its inhabitants. Now that brothers George W. and Jeb Bush are openly pushing for the Senate bill in the House, or indeed any bill at all that can be a vehicle for the Senate bill in conference, one should be able to discern quite clearly that more is at stake in the matter than cheap labor for some construction contractors.

For those of you who now wonder how any of this pertains to small “r” republicanism, it is so simple as this: Very few of your elected leaders or even your supposed “conservative” spokesmen are interested in the sort of republicanism your founders brought out of deliberations from a sweltering Philadelphia convention. If you wish to discern who are Republicans of the “RINO” construct and who are actual republicans, you need only key on their records of adherence to lowercase “r” republican principles, including primarily their previous adherence to the US constitution and its framers’ intent. Flowery words don’t matter. Professions of faith aren’t enough. Look at their records. Look at their ideas and the principles upon which they rely. If you are constitutional conservatives, you must in the name of all you cherish perfect the ability to recognize the charlatans at a mile’s distance. In Washington DC, and in states’ capitals, Republicans are legion, while actual republicans are few, and it’s a ratio we must reverse.

For those who insist upon the rule of law, and who therefore find it abominable that any legislator would support a program of amnesty, it’s impossible to understand how they don’t see the real danger of their immigration proposals. If those who have violated our laws will not be held accountable, forced to leave the country, to be placed in a position at the end of the line, behind all those who have followed the law, why would any person follow the law from the moment some sort of amnesty is enacted? Since legislators are generally a thick-skulled, treacherous, intransigent lot, I thought it would be better to place this in terms they might understand somewhat more readily. Among the things representatives, senators and presidents love best is to spend tax-payers’ money. We have every conceivable evidence to demonstrate this is true, to the outlandish extent that they are willing to spend money they first must ask the Federal Reserve to lend into existence. Their willingness to borrow notwithstanding, I wonder what would happen if some crafty Senator like Ted Cruz(R-TX)(ahem, hint, hint) were to introduce a bill that would provide for a blanket tax-payer amnesty on an indefinite basis, much like has been passed in the Senate for illegals under the Gang-of-Tr8ors Senate Amnesty bill.

How hard could it be, after all? If giving away a pathway to citizenship to scofflaws is expected to ultimately attract some forty-five million new voters, just imagine how many voters our politicians could attract with this plan, and without any worries about messy citizenship paperwork. Of course, you needn’t concern yourselves with the fact that every person in the country would thereafter decide to stop paying their taxes, because we all know how thoroughly serious a matter it is to elected Democrats and Republicans alike to ensure they send the money they owe to Uncle Sam. Think of the cost-savings!

If you think it sounds a bit far-fetched, it’s only because you know politicians would never offer to you, their citizen captives, what they will offer to the new class of wage-slaves they hope to import. Still, I believe this is an important point of order to be raised among the intelligentsia in Washington DC: If amnesty is good for the goose, should it not be likewise good for the gander? I’m not talking about some petty amnesty that will let tax-payers walk on a portion of their bill, one time, for all time. I am describing here an amnesty that would apply across the board to all tax-payers, each and every time they owe taxes, and for the full amount. Why not? Will legislators insist that this is impossible, in part because it will encourage lawlessness, driving tax receipts for the Treasury inexorably downward? Pish-posh, that’s not going to happen, because we have as an example the Senate’s Gang-of-Tr8ors bill that they assure us will have no such effect on the subject of immigration.

Do they want safeguards? Perhaps we should offer such safeguards as they’ve delivered in their Gang-of-Tr8ors bill. On the second Tuesday of next week, we will promise to pay our full tax bills in exchange for amnesty now. We can authorize an “electronic fence” around the US treasury that will be funded by all the new tax-payers this amnesty will provide, right Senator Scrubio(RINO-FL)? I think we could provide assurances to the members of the House and Senate that such an amnesty would never create an empty Treasury, and that legalized anarchy in revenue would not prevail. Indeed, in order to cut government costs of administration, we should hire 10,000 additional IRS bureaucrats to assist with the amnesty. It seems they need more staff, being tied-up as they are with all of those audits of Tea Party and Conservative groups.

Wouldn’t it create vast new economic growth? Imagine all the new economic activity born of such an amnesty! Except for the part that we would be assuring the Congress that tax-bills would naturally continue to be paid on time, and in the full amounts owed, [wink-wink,] we know that the tax-payers who were granted amnesty under such a plan would plow the money into new business endeavors, hire more of those illegal aliens who won’t be illegal any longer, and otherwise create an economic boom! Just imagine: We will have permanently eliminated all tax-cheating!

This all seems too sweet for politicians to pass-up, but I suspect that they’re a bit more realistic about dollars and cents than they are about handing out citizenship, work visas, and “green cards.” It is for precisely the reasons that such a plan is unworkable with taxation and revenue that it is equally preposterous in the field of immigration and border security: Having destroyed all legal barriers, there is no longer any reason to comply with the law, and not a single soul with the minimal sense nature gave to a starfish will be inclined to comply. Why comply when non-compliance carries no penalties and no downside?

I think some enterprising Representative ought to raise this as an amendment to any House bill, (which should be roundly defeated in any case, even absent such provisions,) because I would simply like to see the look on some dim-witted representative’s face, perhaps the budget committee chairman’s, as he tries to explain why amnesty would be great for illegal aliens but horrible for the US tax-payer. I would like to see any of these people justify this in virtually any other context. Sadly, they will avoid this question like the plague, but you should not. Ask them:

“Senator Maverick McLame, can we get some of that blanket amnesty for tax-payers?”